PROBLEM WITH PAYPAL IPN

[dcwm]

I have the following code for an IPN receiver.

When the IPN simulator is used, it gives the response "IPN was sent and handshake was verified". However the code after fsockopen seems not to be working. In the code given, I tried to make it send an email, but I also tried writing to a database table. Nothing seems to work. I more or less copied it from phpbuilder and I am at a loss to know how to debug the thing.

<?php

/* I have followed the detail in the bookmarked PHP Builder article */

header('HTTP/1.1 200 OK');   // Tells PayPal that a notification has been received

$payment_amount   = $_POST['mc_gross'];
$payment_currency = $_POST['mc_currency'];

$nbg = "NBG";

$req='cmd=_notify-validate';

foreach ($_POST as $key => $value) {
   $value = urlencode(stripslashes($value));   

   $req .= "&$key=$value";
   }



$header = "POST /cgi-bin/webscr HTTP/1.1\r\n";

$header .= "Content-Type : application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";

$header .= "Content-Length: " . strlen($req) . "\r\n\r\n";

$fp = fsockopen('ssl://www.paypal.com', 443, $errno, $errstr, 30);

fputs ($fp, $header . $req);   // Send the message back to PayPal which will either send back "VERIFIED" or "INVALID"

    while (!feof($fp)) {
    $res = fgets ($fp, 1024);

    if (strcmp ($res, "VERIFIED") == 0) {
        // PAYMENT VALID

		      // Send an email announcing the IPN message is VERIFIED
            $mail_From    = "[e-mail]";
            $mail_To      = "[e-mail]";
            $mail_Subject = "VERIFIED IPN";
            $mail_Body    = $req;
            mail($mail_To, $mail_Subject, $mail_Body, $mail_From);

    }

    else if (strcmp ($res, "INVALID") == 0) {

        // PAYMENT INVALID



    }
}
fclose ($fp);


?>

[cretaceous]

Not sure where you got this all:
$fp = fsockopen('ssl://www.paypal.com', 443, $errno, $errstr, 30);

this works for me:
$fp = fsockopen('www.paypal.com', 80, $errno, $errstr, 30);

Or use the Paypal sandbox option to debug it.

[Weedpacket]

I had a quick glance at the sample PHP code that PayPal provides, and it may be that there is more in the response than just the bare string (there may be headers and whitespace as well).

[dalecosp]

cretaceous;11053311 wrote:

Not sure where you got this all:
$fp = fsockopen('ssl://www.paypal.com', 443, $errno, $errstr, 30);

this works for me:
$fp = fsockopen('www.paypal.com', 80, $errno, $errstr, 30);

Or use the Paypal sandbox option to debug it.

He does want a secure connection; the ssl:// protocol is provided in the List of Supported Socket Transports.

[dcwm]

Wednesday Evening. I am still trying to find where the error lies and will ask for some more advice on Friday. Putting echos all over and so on. Something wrong with the file pointer I think.

[sneakyimp]

I notice that you don't bother checking $fp before you attempt to do something with it. Maybe try reading the docs on [man]fsockopen[/man] so that you can learn to detect an error condition (and possibly an explanatory error message) ?

I would also suggest that you try [man]curl[/man] instead of fsockopen as it is a higher-level code construct which I find more user-friendly.

[dcwm]

I altered the code to read

$fp = fsockopen('www.paypal.com', 80, $errno, $errstr, 30);
echo nl2br("Marker A\n");
echo $fp;

and the result was

Marker A
Resource id #2

Got me foxed !

I tried curl but it gave an error

[sneakyimp]

That altered code is connecting on port 80 which is not encrypted. The original port 443 connection would be more secure. Up to you.

I would note that your code doesn't bother to check $errno or $errstr and it also doesn't bother to check the result of [man]fputs[/man] or [man]fgets[/man] or [man]fclose[/man]. It's good practice when attempting operations that might fail (like writing to or reading from a file, socket, or stream) if the operation worked or not.

I would also suggest that instead of echo statements that you consider writing log messages to a file or database table. That way, you can get an idea of what is happening when the page is accessed by PayPal.