Treasury

Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 7:10 am

Guardian, there is thread after thread in the Paypal forums about possible causes of INVALID. When the IPN processing program receives transactions after the payment is made in Paypal it has to process them, update a log file, and send the exact same set of transactions back to Paypal. Paypal then "verifies" this and sends a valid or invalid message back to the IPN program on your site. If you don't send back to Paypal exactly what it sent to you as POST variables, it will send back an INVALID.

The two accounts are really only needed in the sandbox. I have a "biz" account there and a normal one. The sandbox simulates the real environment as much as it can. For instance it sends an email to both the biz account and the "normal" account when the transaction is completed but these are just simulated emails that you can only read through the sandbox interface. Likewise there is a simulated account management tool in sandbox where you can review all your transactions and there is a handy little IPN generator that will send simulated sets of IPN transactions to your IPN processing program on your web site. That said, setting up the sandbox accounts properly can be a P.I.T.A. especially until you know all the ins and outs.

Testy, yeah, that's true if everything works perfectly for you. I guess if you get a reliable, tested package that works out of the box that will be fine. But if you run into any problems or want to do any customization you will need the sandbox process. For example, on a couple of my sites I have a club or gallery membership process. So to join people have to go through Paypal. I want to wait until the IPN process returns a VALID before I mark the people as "paid" in my membership database. So I have to diddle with the IPN processing program. If I make any mistakes in my code I won't see it normally because the IPN program is processed in the background. So I really need a Sandbox process to make sure I have all the bugs out. Anybody doing any customization will have similar needs.

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Aug 27, 2002 Posts: 17088

Quote:

The two accounts are really only needed in the sandbox.

I use the 2 accounts in/for Production testing. I usually use amounts of $.01 - $.10 for the testing.

Just as an FYI, and I'm not debating nor arguing but just relaying my own experiences, I have never found the need to use the sandbox. I know and understand what it is and have used this type technology/function in the past with other production systems. There may come a time when I will need/use it. For now, I just work through the issues in my private production testing grounds Smile

. I like to see what's really going to happen Wink

Involved Joined: Apr 06, 2008 Posts: 484

fkelly wrote:

Testy, yeah, that's true if everything works perfectly for you. I guess if you get a reliable, tested package that works out of the box that will be fine. But if you run into any problems or want to do any customization you will need the sandbox process. For example, on a couple of my sites I have a club or gallery membership process. So to join people have to go through Paypal. I want to wait until the IPN process returns a VALID before I mark the people as "paid" in my membership database. So I have to diddle with the IPN processing program. If I make any mistakes in my code I won't see it normally because the IPN program is processed in the background. So I really need a Sandbox process to make sure I have all the bugs out. Anybody doing any customization will have similar needs.

Nuke treasury was designed as a donations module.I've set up many for people and have never had an issue if its set-up correctly.It seems you are needed more than just a donations module which would require a new module all together (or massive work to the existing treasury module).This would require extensive programming and testing to even get it to the stage treasury is currently at.I'm not saying that it would not be a good addition to RN but it is a long way off in my opinion.The best way would be to enhance and patch treasury to the current RN standard and then look at adding features as time permits.

Worker Joined: Aug 02, 2004 Posts: 165

Raven wrote:

Now that RN v2.3 is out and about I will have more time to devote to other endeavors Smile

. I hope to be releasing an official NT v2.0 in the near future.

That's sounds like a nice plan! What kind of schedule have you planned? Groovy

BTW- Does Nuke Treasury v1.1 work in rn2.3 without a need to modify the php-code a lot?

registered · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6437

Quote:

You just need Instant Payment Notification (IPN) which requires a premium account.The premium account is free so you just upgrade.Once that is done it is as easy as,

1. activating IPN and inputting your notification url
2. Turn on auto reporting and set the url.
3. turn on payment data transfer
4. turn off block non-encrypted payment
5. turn on paypal account optional

I'm not sure this is entirely correct, testy1. I set up a business account tonight for a non-profit, and was able to activate IPN and set the notification URL without having a "premium" account (I don't remember needing that for other accounts before, either). However, I can't get it to work correctly (or test correctly), but I think that's a problem with the ipn file using RavenNuke (I should know shortly).

What did you mean by payment data transfer, block non-encrypted payment and paypal account optional?

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 10:19 pm

I was talking about the free paypal account.All the people that have come to me have always had free accounts.

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 10:49 pm

Yes, I saw that when I checked just now.

What did you mean by:
2. Turn on auto reporting and set the url.
3. turn on payment data transfer
4. turn off block non-encrypted payment
5. turn on paypal account optional

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 10:58 pm

You can set those options at

Profile > Website Payment Preferences

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 11:05 pm

OK. I found it. I don't think you need to turn on auto reporting or payment data transfer, but you should probably verify 4 and 5.

The IPN transactions appear to not be happening, though it is active and enabled to the correct URL. Is bank verification required for that? I added a log at the beginning of that file, and it isn't getting hit on the transactions....

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 11:15 pm

I just set them up as stated and they work, although sometimes it can take 1 -2 days to start happening.

Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 11:33 pm

I figured it out... I converted it to use the mainfile for db functions, and NukeSentinel was blocking it! A few more modifications, and it's working correctly now (for the most part).

Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 4:52 pm

I have had similar problems "debugging" pp_ipn.php which is the standard name of the program that Paypal sends transactions back to when a payment is complete. And like Kguske I had problems including mainfile and eventually dropped that idea.

Just generally, since pp_ipn.php is executed in the background and not in a user session it is hard to debug when problems occur. You really don't need all the mainfile overhead being included in pp_ipn.php but you do need config.php to be included to get the database parameters correctly. Problem is that we modified config.php in 2.3 to concatenate the INCLUDE_PATH constant with rnconfig.php when we include rnconfig.php at the bottom of config.php. The web gets more tangled still because the value of INCLUDE_PATH in defined in mainfile so if you don't do include that then the include of rnconfig will fail. But if you do include mainfile the whole program will fail (pp_ipn.php I mean.

My solution was to modify config.php to not stick the include_path in. I never understood why it was put in there in the first place, I know there are some legitimate reasons that were discussed in our issue tracking system but they don't apply to my sites. Probably a better solution would be (a) either have an if_defined statement for include path in config.php or just copy the database parameters to a separate paypal_config file and include that without including the rest of the stuff.

Now as to debugging pp_ipn.php there's several options available. First the paypal sandbox has a testing tool that will send transactions to pp_ipn.php. So if you have sandbox set up you can use that without completing payments. Still, if you have errors you really don't see them because of the way pp_ipn.php is executed so you are reduced to reading entrails. What I generally do is:

1. Execute the program from the address bar rather then through Paypal. You won't get the post variables that way but you will at least be able to see syntax errors. Of course turning up error reporting all the way helps too.
2. When 1 works then start with a progressive series of comments within the program. By that I mean comment out everything after the initial includes and after you read in the post variables. See if that much works. Since you wont' see the output you can use the mail statement that's in pp_ipn.php to email yourself the values of the post variables. When you get a correct set of those, move your comments down lower and gradually test each phase of the program. The program will for instance write to a file called ipnlog.txt ... so move your comment below that part and see if it works.
3. Use the mail statement liberally. You can have several in there so mail yourself the results after each phase. For instance you write a variable called $req back to Paypal. That variable contains the posted items that Paypal has sent to you.

Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 5:08 pm

when I want to see what is going on I use the following in my header

Code:




if (count($_GET)) {


            echo "<pre>GET: ";


            print_r($_GET);


            echo "</pre>";


        }


        if (count($_POST)) {


            echo "<pre>POST: ";


            print_r($_POST);


            echo "</pre>";


        }

Regular Joined: Sep 16, 2008 Posts: 62

testy1 wrote:

you dont need all that.

You just need Instant Payment Notification (IPN) which requires a premium account.The premium account is free so you just upgrade.Once that is done it is as easy as,

1. activating IPN and inputting your notification url
2. Turn on auto reporting and set the url.
3. turn on payment data transfer
4. turn off block non-encrypted payment
5. turn on paypal account optional

and your done

as a newb to this stuff i was told to search IPN on a diff post i made so i did i found testy1 instructions so i followed them but i still have the problem of donations not showing up on the *donat-o-meter* block raven listed in his download section

Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 10:07 am

Thats because those scripts are using old code (2004 to 2006) and for various reasons are no longer compatible with RavenNuke(tm) 2.3
There is a fixed commercial version available, you could wait for Raven to release his NT 2.0 version or if you are comfortable editing PHP files you could check out the "Modifying modules" forums which will help you modify the code to work.

@kguske yes NS does block doing it that way. I just did a seperate config include.

New Member Joined: Dec 22, 2008 Posts: 11

Im running RN 2.3 and using this theme. http://www.clan-themes.co.uk/shop_item-113-anzio-multi-gaming-theme.html

My question is this... I have installed Nuke Tresury. I do see the block after i enabled it, but when i click on the $ the Tresury icon in the admin panal i get a blank page! no errors nothing.

Could somone help us out ? Here is the link to the blank page i get when i click on the tresury icon in the admin panel. <link edited out by admin>

thanks

Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 8:36 am

Anyone who clicks on the link in the previous post is going to get banned from the site; probably for trying to enter an admin area.

If you are getting blank pages turn on error reporting and also take a look at your dblog. These topics (turning on error reporting and the dblog) have been discussed many times in the forums.

Let us know what you see.

Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 8:45 am

wxjoe - I have removed the link that went to your administration page to avoid anyone getting banned by using that link. You should never ever post administrative links in public because they may get crawled by search engines and you will end up accidentally blocking search engines from your site.

Once you have turned error reporting on, you will probably find that the error message relates to "sql_query" and the reason for that has already been discussed in this and other threads. there is currently no free, publicly available Nuke treasury module that works with RN2.3 without modification (that I know of).

Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 8:47 am

Is there one that i can pay for ?

Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 8:57 am

Yes there is;
http://www.code-authors.com/modules.php?name=Digital_Shop&cat=3