PayPal - Get transaction details for recurring profile

Question

On making the TransactionSearch request I receive the list of the transactions with the TRANSACTIONID field for the transactions, corresponding to the recurring payments, in the form e.g. "I-BRPN2RUD8W0G" (current is fake).

For the rest transactions - I get usual 17 single-byte alphanumeric string. That means, that for recurring payments PayPal returns ProfileID, but not TransactionID.

As a result when I request the GetTransactionDetails with this transaction id passed to PayPal I receive valid details for ordinary payments and ERROR with the message "The transaction id is not valid" for the case of recurring payments.

Answer 1

You will need to set IPN as suggested by Sanjiv. You can get the fields as per IPN Variables. In case of refund you will also need to use parent_txn_id

If you are new with this and finding tough, you can use IPN listener class and then integrate below code

$listener = new IpnListener();

try {
    $verified = $listener->processIpn();
} catch (Exception $e) {
    return Log::error($e->getMessage());
}

if ($verified) {

$data = $_POST;
$user_id = json_decode($data['custom'])->user_id;

$subscription = ($data['mc_gross_1'] == '10') ? 2 : 1;

$txn = array(
    'txn_id'       => $data['txn_id'],
    'user_id'      => $user_id,
    'paypal_id'    => $data['subscr_id'],
    'subscription' => $subscription,
    'expires'      => date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('+1 Month')),
);

Payment::create($txn);

} else {
    Log::error('Transaction not verified');
}

Save this file code in file let say, ipn.php and now assign web path for this file in your paypal account.

PS: make sure your IPN file is on publicly accessible URL. Do not use local or restricted server.

Answer 2

You have to set IPN in your Paypal merchant account (specially for recurring payments), Which sends you back a transaction details when a recurring payment happens, from there you can get $_POST['txn_id'] which is your TRANSACTIONID if $_POST['txn_type'] is recurring_payment. Save the details in your database and then you can call GetTransactionDetails method when you need transaction details. More