How to Set Up PayPal Payment Gateway Integration in PHP
PayPal is a third party payment gateway which is used in the applications and websites like e-Commerce and like many others to make online payments for the products they purchase on these applications and websites.
PayPal is one of the top payment gateway service provider on the web and with that being able to integrate to your website with the latest PayPal’s Instant Payment Notification Service (IPN) is an essential thing to do if you need to process payment through your website.
There are more than 2 parts to the PayPal IPN system:
· An initial request on PayPal to make a Payment.
· Second PHP page on the website server that PayPal uses to notify you that the payment has been made and the status of it.
· In last at a webpage which confirms that the payment made and continues on to the next phase or next page of application it could be a Thank you after the user has purchased and continuing shopping too.
The parts with 1 and 3 discussed above in the article are accessible by the customers as they initiate the payment option for the purchase they made.
Also, you have to make sure that you are receiving the correct response from PayPal making sure that you are using the main test account.
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What is going to learn in this article?
1. How to integrate PayPal payment gateway using PHP in your application and process payments
2. How to test PayPal gateway integration using PayPal sandbox.
Let’s check out what different options PayPal provide to integrate the gateway like,
1. On Checkout
2. PayPal Payment Standard
3. Paying out on a store
4. Making an Invoice
5. While accepting the card payments
6. Making payments through PayPal subscriptions
The most common way to integrate the PayPal integration is using the “PayPal Payment Standard”
What is a Payment Gateway integration comprised of?
1. How does it work?
2. The steps to integrate a Payment Gateway
3. The File Structure
4. An example showing the integration of payment using PayPal Payments Standards
5. Database Scripting
6. Live Payments
7. Payment gateway integration output.
Integrating PayPal payment gateway integration steps
· Render the PayPal payment form of HTML with the required parameter and “custom Pay-Now button”.
· There should be suitable fields for the form to fill the item information like the merchant name, ID, email ID, callback URL.
· There should be a suitable action for the form with PayPal sandbox/live URL endpoint to which the payment details has to be sent on submit.
· Handling the payment response in the IPN to update the database or to send email to the customer or both.
· Check the user details very appropriately while returning back to the page after the payment cycle.
File Structure
The landing page of the PayPal payment gateway shows the entry point for proceeding with the PayPal transaction process. After the page loads, it will show you the sample product tile containing PayPal payment fields following by a Pay-Now button.
The return.php and cancel.php are those pages the user is redirected to when the user is done with the PayPal transaction life cycle the user is directed to them appropriately. The notify.php is the IPN of the application which notifies the users about the payment status and details. It saves the payment transaction response data in the connected databases.
What is PayPal IPN?
PayPal notifies the merchants about the event that are related to their transactions. This is an automatic callback and can be used to perform administrative orders and to fulfil orders.
The notification is sent to the merchants on different types of events by PayPal like payments received, authorized made, recurring payments, making subscriptions, refunds and charges.
A notification is an integral part of payment gateway integration process and has the ability to receive PayPal notification and process other backend administrative processes.
The Database Controller
DBController.php
This file in the system handles the database related functions using prepared statements with the MySQL. It is important to remember to use prepared statements as it will safeguard yours from the SQL injection and a primary step towards your security of the application.
Database Script
This section here shows the payment database table or in simpler words what transactions have been made it shows you the whole table in the .sql format. Also, it provides you with downloadable source code with sql/payment.sql file.
How to test the PayPal Payment Integration Gateway using the sandbox?
Before the implementation of PayPal successfully each and every bit of this should be checked as the PHP code you are using should be checked as at this stage while making payments a casual implementation is not afforded.
PayPal provides excellent tools to perform the end to end testing of the payment gateway integration. It provides the sandbox environment using which one can simulate and go on further with the complete payment process including the payments and fulfilment step to complete the steps.
The instant payment notification services in this part are also to be tested which is sometimes quite critical sometimes in order to fulfil the process. Let’s check on some of the steps below to set up a PayPal Sandbox account and test your PHP code for payment gateway integration.
1. Signing Up with the PayPal developer
2. Creating a Sandbox business and Personal accounts with the sandbox Dashboard>Sandbox>Accounts
3. Providing the specific sandbox business account email address in the payment form.
4. Add a PayPal sandbox endpoint URL
5. If you use a PIN, add sandbox URL to have access via cURL.
The output of the Payment Gateway Integration
After making a successful transaction or a payment, the user will automatically be redirected to the return URL as specified in the payment form. The return page will acknowledge the user as the script analyses the user.
The return page or the URL is nothing but a thank you page or order completion page. This is the very last step of the Payment Gateway integration process.
There are some important things to know that the order fulfilment steps should not be in a sequence in the return URL call. It could be done with the help of IPN callback function or the other PayPal Notifications which a user receives normally.
Conclusion
Hiring the right PHP developer can help you with the integration process of payment gateway as well as much other functionality that you might be missing out on. There are best PHP development companies out there are which can help you with any PHP integration services. PayPal payment gateway integration in a PHP website is only done by highly dedicated PHP developers. PayPal payment gateway integration is one of the best and secure payment gateway integration as for any eCommerce store out there or any website who goes for this option for making a secure a payment platform for the customers.
