Rails - Oct 2008 - ActiveMerchant and Encrypted Paypal Standard Checkout

Hi,

Does any know about a good resource for using ActiveMerchant to create
an encrypted button that will use Paypal''s Standard checkout mode?

Best regards,
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I have found some info on the following page: 
http://www.fortytwo.gr/blog/14/Using-Paypal-with-Rails

However at some point, the writer creates a Crypto42 module which 
encrypts the data for the button, but this defeats the purpose of using 
ActiveMerchant. Doesn''t AM ship with a way to encrypt the button?

AM has all the code necessary to handle the IPN so that''s not a
problem,
but I don''t understand how to create an encrypted button with AM.
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This took me about a week of hair-pulling to finally locate and I''m 
happy to save you that pain --   :)

It seems that the nice folks at PayPal actually wrote a rails plugin to 
do this and then decided to TELL NO ONE ABOUT IT!

Somehow I found it after A LOT of looking.  The name of the magic plugin 
is "PayPalWPSToolkit" and currently sits in my Rails Plugin folder.  I
wish I could tell you the exact url I downloaded it from but I''m sure 
you can google around and find it somewhere.

I have it up and running on my site and it works like a charm.
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Hi John,

Thanks for your reply. In the mean time I had found the Paypal plugin 
which is buried somewhere in their developer website.

The link I have posted earlier actually has taken code from it to create 
the button. I still don''t understand why it is not made available 
out-of-the-box in ActiveMerchant.

I would have one Paypal specific question for you: do you know how to 
redirect the user automatically to the credit card form instead of 
having him redirected first to a page where there is no  credit card 
form and where the buyer must seek for a "don''t have a paypal
account
yet" link?


Best regards,

PS: You are right, Paypal''s websites are total crap with respect to
user
interface, I constantly get lost...
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Like you, I spent some time trying to avoid this obfuscation for my 
users but had no luck -- obviously, Paypal has set it up that way on 
purpose to encourage Paypal usage.  Not nice of them especially since a 
lot of my users are from an older demographic less savvy about 
Paypal/Web and less able to notice the little link allowing them to use 
a credit card.  They get confused.

Seperately, from the recesses of my brain here''s one more little
"tip"
if you adopt the plugin -- the plugin can override most any setting that 
you can set on the website.  So, for example, if you change your ipn 
redirect url or anything in your "profile" on the website it will have
no effect if you''ve also set it in your call from the rails app.

I recently switched my site from http to https and couldn''t figure out 
why PayPal kept sending my IPNs and PDTs to http even though I 
instructed https on the website.  The answer was that I had forgotten 
that I was overriding the website with my orginal call from my app.
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> Like you, I spent some time trying to avoid this obfuscation for my 
> users but had no luck -- obviously, Paypal has set it up that way on 
> purpose to encourage Paypal usage.
>
I know it is possible to do it, because the peepcode.com website does 
it. As the developer of the website didn''t even bother encrypting the 
params, I tried to look at the html code, but I was not able to identify 
any param that could alter this behaviour. It is probably a hidden 
option somewhere in the paypal Business profile.
> Seperately, from the recesses of my brain here''s one more little
"tip"
> if you adopt the plugin [...]
>
The code in this plugin is an absolute joke. Very php-compliant. Some 
methods simply call other methods without doing anything at all except 
passing the exact same args. I am also fed up having to hunt for these 
class vars scattered all over the place.

I would not recommend using this plugin as is, it is better to 
understand it and refactor it... a lot.

By the way, why do you use SSL for the IPN? Isn''t Paypal''s
notification
encrypted?


PS: the developer of the Rails plugin by Paypal is a developer of 
ActiveMerchant.
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I checked out peepcode and it seems like I landed on the same PayPal 
page that my users land on.  Specifically, there''s this text on the
left
side of the Paypal page --
Don''t have a PayPal account?
Use your credit card or bank account (where available).
<a>Continue</a>
<--small, easily missed link
The right side of the page has a big "Log In To Paypal" box.

Yep, plugin seems to be haphazardly translated from some other source 
(as you sugggest--probably PHP).  I cut and pasted what I needed and
I''m
not even sure how much of it I''m actually using any more.  In that 
sense, it got the job done and I was grateful for it.

You''re right, SSL for ipn is overkill.  It was quicker to just SSL the 
whole checkout controller instead of making an exception for my 
ipn_update action.

My app has a lot of private data on it so for marketing purposes I often 
use https in places that don''t really need it -- there''s that
small
slice of observant people that perhaps take comfort in seeing https 
sprinkled around and maybe that''s worth the extra server encryption 
overhead.
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John Clancy wrote:
> I checked out peepcode and it seems like I landed on the same PayPal 
> page that my users land on.  Specifically, there''s this text on
the left
> side of the Paypal page --
> Don''t have a PayPal account?
> Use your credit card or bank account (where available).
<a>Continue</a>
> <--small, easily missed link
> The right side of the page has a big "Log In To Paypal" box.
>
There is something paranormal going on, I just tested again peepcode, 
and I directly landed on the credit card form using Safari 3.1. Then I 
tried with Firefox 3, and I landed on the crappy paypal page where you 
must first click on the tiny link to get to the credit card form...
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Clearly, PayPal/Ebay has a bias for Mac users.

Maybe PayPal''s running a quick and dirty test on click-through rates
and
is using browser type to maintain a consistent presentation to the two 
classes of users.  In the off chance that someone buys multiple items 
through WPS they won''t keep seeing different versions of the landing 
page (assuming they always use the same web browser).
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I tested again on my WinXP box, you seem to be right, Paypal checks for 
the client Platform:

I tested on my own website to see how it redirects to Paypal:

Mac+FF3: crap page
Mac+Saf: credit card form

Win+FF3: credit card form
Win+IE6: credit card form


Best regards,
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