Add name, address, city, etc to Stripe Customer object in PHP

Question

I am using Stripe for payments and would like to add some additional information (First and Last name, address and phone) to the user object.

$token  = $_POST['stripeToken'];
$email  = strip_tags(trim($_POST['email']));
$donation_type = $_POST['type'];
$donation_type_other = $_POST['other'];

// User Info
$name_first = $_POST['name_first'];
$name_last = $_POST['name_last'];
$address = $_POST['address'];
$city = $_POST['city'];
$state = $_POST['state'];
$zip = $_POST['zip'];
$user_info = array("First Name" => $name_first, "Last Name" => $name_last, "Address" => $address, "State" => $state, "Zip Code" => $zip);

// Metadata for the charge
$metadata_charge = array();
if (!empty($donation_type_other) && $donation_type == 'Other') {
    $metadata_charge = array("Donation Type" => $donation_type, "Other" => $donation_type_other);   
} else {
    $metadata_charge = array("Donation Type" => $donation_type);    
}

$customer = \Stripe\Customer::create(array(
  'email' => $email,
  'card'  => $token,
  'metadata' => $user_info
));

$charge = \Stripe\Charge::create(array(
  'customer' => $customer->id,
  'receipt_email' => $email,
  'amount'   => $_POST['amount']*100,
  'currency' => 'usd',
  "metadata" => $metadata_charge
));

What is the best way to do this? To use metadata on the Customer object? Or would I set it as the shipping address/info?

Answer 1

Since you're creating a customer object, based on your description of what you want to store, it doesn't seem like it really matters. Stripe isn't going to be doing any fulfillment of physical goods, so the storage they're offering on the customer object is mostly for your benefit. Therefore, when you access the customer object (via an ID like cus_8Dmu7vi6wah58z), it should return all of the shipping information AND the metadata.

There is a dedicated name field in the shipping hash, but it doesn't abstract out first name from last name. If this is something you really want, it's probably going to be easier to store this in the metadata field.

You can also note that it might be helpful to store "shipping" information in the shipping hash, and store "billing" information in the Metadata hash.