Paypal click button check not working?

jbhyers

has anyone else had this problem? I have a simple check on my paypal button to send an email to me when the "buy now" button is clicked. However the email is never sent. I wonder if the action of the form to redirect to paypal is happening before the php code can send the email? Here is the code I can't figure this one out if anyone knows.

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
	<?php
if ($_POST['_xclick']==1)
{ 
      $sendto2 =  "example@example.com"; 
      $subject2 = "Antithrombotic Therapy Button Was Pushed"; 
	  // Always set content-type when sending HTML email
      $headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0" . "\r\n";
      $headers .= "Content-type:text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" . "\r\n";
	  // More headers
      $headers .= 'From: "Button PUSHED!" <example@example.com>' . "\r\n";
      $headers .= 'Cc: example@example.com' . "\r\n";
      $message2 = "

<html>
<head>
<title>CARE Clinical Research Antithrombotic Therapy Inquiry Form</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Antithrombotic Therapy Course Registration Button</h2>
<p>A User Clicked The Sign Up Button</p>		      

</body>
</html>  

";		   		   

      mail($sendto2,$subject2,$message2,$headers);
}
?>
    <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_s-xclick">
    <input type="hidden" name="hosted_button_id" value="6001342">
	<input type="hidden" name="_xclick" value="1">  

	<input type="hidden" name="cbt" value="Complete Registration - Choose USERNAME/PASSWORD">
    <input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_buynowCC_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" class="center" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!">
    <img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
    </form>

bradgrafelman

PHP is a server-side language. Thus, all PHP code is evaluated and executed, and then the page gets sent to the user's browser.

jbhyers

Well I placed the code at the beginning of the form, at the top of the page, and in side the form HTML and it is not being executed so I have no idea.

Kudose

That's because the form is posting to PayPal, not your site. PayPal should allow you a callback URL to send your emails out.

bradgrafelman

Kudose's suggestion sounds like what you're after.

I still don't know if you're completely understanding the issue here, though.

When you go to the URL for this page, the server parses and executes all PHP code. Since $POST['xclick'] doesn't exist at that point yet (nothing's been POST'ed anywhere), the if() statement fails and your code is skipped. Then the server sends the HTML page to your browser. When you submit the form in your browser, it submits to PayPal's site (as Kudose pointed out).

It doesn't matter where in the code you place the PHP if() statement - you could put it at the very bottom if you felt like it. The point is that all of the PHP code is executed by the server, the resulting HTML content is sent to the user's browser, and then the connection is severed. If you want to execute PHP code when a form is submitted, you'll either have to a) POST the form back to your server, b) since we're talking PayPal, you can use the callback URL Kudose mentioned above, or c) use some sort of AJAX (client-side) code on the page that makes a request to your server before submitting the form to PayPal's website.

jbhyers

Yes this is what I though might be the problem. The post is not going to my site but to Paypal so I figured that the if statement was failing and never being executed. I suppose my problem is I want an email sent if the user pushes a button to go to paypal so I can track when they actually are directed to paypal. Since the form is not posting to my site is there a way to accomplish that? Can a form post to a different url and one on my site at the same time. Seems like a strange question but I do understand why the code will not work just looking for a way to track if this button is actually clicked.

Kudose

You could create an onsubmit javascript action that calls a URL to send the emails out from (hint: ajax) and when it receives it's response, submit the form.

jbhyers

yes it looks like using an HTTP referrer and AJAX would be a solution, I also thought about placing just an image button that clicked would refer to a script that would then submit the variables to paypal and an email to me as another solution. I've also read about using x and y coordinates to check if an image was clicked with php so I may look at that as well, it's an interesting problem. Thanks!