I'm totally lost in how couchcart uses paypal as a checkout method. Does it use express checkout? Also how would I make sure of paypal ipn to store an order history into a database?

[KK]

Hi,

CouchCArt currently uses only PayPal Standard (i.e. the visitor is redirected way from the store to PayPal site to complete the transaction).

As for the other question - as mentioned in the docs, CouchCart does not (yet) support order-management, customer-management etc. Therefore there is no direct way of storing the incoming IPN and associate it with an order.

So I know that CouchCart makes use of the paypal however I'm not sure as to what exactly happens.
According to the CouchCart Docs the paypal button is <cms:paypal_button /> however on the demo they use <input class="btn btn-success product-add" type="submit" value="Add to Cart"> Is this the same thing? The reason I'm asking is because I want to pass the member name to paypal as a custom field, so that when paypal sends the ipn to my website I'll get the member name and can update the database based on that information. (It's for storing order history)

[KK]

Hi,

You seem to be confusing between two very distinct concepts -
1. PayPal button
2. PayPal cart

Allow me to recap the differences between the two.

PayPal button is used to show a button per product where clicking on the button leads the visitor immediately to PayPal with info about that one single product.


PayPal cart on the other hand does not give you any such buttons. You create your own (as you mentioned <input class="btn btn-success product-add" type="submit" value="Add to Cart">).

More importantly, clicking on these buttons does *not* lead the visitor immediately to PayPal (as was the case with the PayPal buttons above). Rather, the product associated with the button is added to a cart. The visitor may keep surfing the site and adding more products to the cart (or removing them). Finally when she decides to click ckeckout, that is where she is redirected to PayPal with info about *all* the products in the cart (as opposed to only a single product in the case of PayPal button).

So if your site is selling only a handful of products, PayPal button is good.
For anything more extensive, PayPal cart should serve better.

Having understood the differences, I'd like to point out that the two concepts have documented separately in Couch -

PayPal button:
http://www.couchcms.com/docs/concepts/paypal.html
http://www.couchcms.com/docs/tags-refer ... utton.html

PayPal cart:
http://www.couchcms.com/docs/concepts/s ... art-1.html
http://www.couchcms.com/docs/concepts/s ... art-2.html

Hope it helps.

Hi,

You seem to be confusing between two very distinct concepts -
1. PayPal button
2. PayPal cart

...

Hope it helps.

So as far as I understand, the current paypal cart implementation does NOT make use of the paypal IPN (paypal processor) nor is there any way to send a custom variable to the paypal cart?

Edit: I tried using <cms:paypal_button /> but when a user clicks the button it brings them to the cart instead of to paypal?

Edit2: I tried using the custom text field to send the member name for usage later on, and this is what the transaction detail looked like

[KK]

So as far as I understand, the current paypal cart implementation does NOT make use of the paypal IPN (paypal processor) nor is there any way to send a custom variable to the paypal cart?

Correct.

Edit: I tried using <cms:paypal_button /> but when a user clicks the button it brings them to the cart instead of to paypal?

That is strange. Not sure what is happening.

Edit2: I tried using the custom text field to send the member name for usage later on, and this is what the transaction detail looked like

From the screenshot it is evident that it is the cart (and not the button) that was used to reach PayPal. Custom field works only with buttons.

So as far as I understand, the current paypal cart implementation does NOT make use of the paypal IPN (paypal processor) nor is there any way to send a custom variable to the paypal cart?

Correct.

Edit: I tried using <cms:paypal_button /> but when a user clicks the button it brings them to the cart instead of to paypal?

That is strange. Not sure what is happening.

Edit2: I tried using the custom text field to send the member name for usage later on, and this is what the transaction detail looked like

From the screenshot it is evident that it is the cart (and not the button) that was used to reach PayPal. Custom field works only with buttons.

Correct, when I got the custom field to show up on paypal I had reverted the button to the input type as apposed to the paypal button. My point was to show that if there was a 'custom field' that was just hidden from the users standpoint (Even if it showed up in the paypal cart) I can use that to inevitably create an order form. My only problem therein is creating the field, and hiding it from the users. So far I'm just using Member Name[*TEXT*] on the products variation group. I'm looking to do something like Member Name[<cms:show k_member_name />] and have that value hidden.

[KK]

My only problem therein is creating the field, and hiding it from the users. So far I'm just using Member Name[*TEXT*] on the products variation group. I'm looking to do something like Member Name[<cms:show k_member_name />] and have that value hidden.

I think I answered that in your other thread - viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9386

You can set the 'custom' variable using any variable like this

Code: Select all

<cms:paypal_button  custom="<cms:show some_variable />" />

So, for example, if you want to send the logged-in member's name into it, the code would become

Code: Select all

<cms:paypal_button  custom="<cms:show k_member_name />" />

Does it help?

My only problem therein is creating the field, and hiding it from the users. So far I'm just using Member Name[*TEXT*] on the products variation group. I'm looking to do something like Member Name[<cms:show k_member_name />] and have that value hidden.

I think I answered that in your other thread - viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9386

You can set the 'custom' variable using any variable like this

Code: Select all

<cms:paypal_button  custom="<cms:show some_variable />" />

So, for example, if you want to send the logged-in member's name into it, the code would become

Code: Select all

<cms:paypal_button  custom="<cms:show k_member_name />" />

Does it help?

I understood this however, as mentioned before, I'm not using the paypal button anymore. What I want would be a hidden field in the CMS Template.

[KK]

I'm not using the paypal button anymore. What I want would be a hidden field in the CMS Template.

OK. Not sure how you propose to use the hidden field but if you want to use it to pass on some info to PayPal hoping that it gets returned to you via IPN - it won't work because the cart does not use IPN (unlike the button).

Without IPN we have no way of associating an order on our site with the payment that happens on a remote site (i.e. PayPal).