Stripe, verify card and only charge it after an action

Question

I'm working on enabling payments for a website. I'm using Stripe as the provider. I wanted to know how I could charge the card if 2 conditions are true. When the user pays, I want to change a value in the database, and charge the card. But I don't want to charge the card if the database query fails. Similarly, I don't want to query if the card is invalid. I need both, the card to be valid and for the query to be successful. How do I do that?

Here's the code for charging the card

try {
$charge = \Stripe\Charge::create(array(
  "amount" => $amount, // amount in cents, again
  "currency" => "cad",
  "source" => $token,
  "description" => $description)
);
} catch(\Stripe\Error\Card $e) {
  // The card has been declined
}

Answer 1

Instead of charging the card, you should think about charging a customer. By this I mean:

1. Create a customer

$customer = \Stripe\Customer::create(array(
  "description" => "Customer for [email protected]",
  "source" => "tok_15gDQhLIVeeEqCzasrmEKuv8" // obtained with Stripe.js
));

2. Create a card

$card = $customer->sources->create(array("source" => "tok_15gDQhLIVeeEqCzasrmEKuv8"));

From Stripe API Reference:

source | external_account REQUIRED When adding a card to a customer, the parameter name is source. The value can either be a token, like the ones returned by our Stripe.js, or a dictionary containing a user’s credit card details. Stripe will automatically validate the card.

By creating a card, Stripe will automatically validate it. So having a valid credit card object you can then perform whatever query you want on your db and if success, charge the customer.

3. Charge

\Stripe\Charge::create(array(
    "amount" => 400,
    "currency" => "usd",
    "source" => "tok_15gDQhLIVeeEqCzasrmEKuv8", // obtained with Stripe.js,
    // "customer" => $cusomer->id // the customer created above
    "metadata" => array("order_id" => "6735")
));

When charging, you can either pass the source (the token obtained with Stripe.js) or the customer id we just created.

Also don't forget to try...catch everything.

Answer 2

Ok, so after reading through the API, I found that this is acheivable by setting the capture parameter to false

Like this:

$charge = \Stripe\Charge::create(array(
  "amount" => $amount, // amount in cents, again
  "currency" => "cad",
  "source" => $token,
  "description" => $description,
  "capture" => false)
);

And this will authorize the payment and the card but not create a charge. After you do the querying and make sure it's successful, you can charge the customer (capture the charge) using this

$ch = \Stripe\Charge::retrieve({$charge->id});
$ch->capture();