PayPal IPN?

[gsm]

We used Paypal for subscriptions for may years with v3.x but now can't get it to work correctly in v5.5. The vBulletin manual shows leaving the URL in the PayPal setup blank but activating the IPN function. PP will no longer let you do that - they insist on having a URL there if IPN is selected as active. If we enter the URL to our vBulletin setup we get a double URL and an error.

Can anyone point me in the right direction for getting this to work? Thanks in advance!

Glenn

[Wayne Luke]

Use /payment_gateway.php.

[gsm]

Use /payment_gateway.php.

Wayne - unfortunately this still doesn't work. Perhaps some more details about our setup and what we've tried would help.

• In version 3.x, the PP IPN functionality worked fine. Still does - we have the old server still available and if we set the PP URL to that system, payments process normally
• With v5.5, in PP, as per your suggestion on the 26th, we now have the following URL specified for IPN: https://hoster3.commander.org/vb/payment_gateway.php
  • This logs a vb_error_code of 'authentication_failure' each time it tries to process a transaction
• We initially tried the PP URL as per the VB manual - same error: https://hoster3.commander.org/vb/payment_gateway.php /?method=paypal
• PP insists on a valid URL in the IPN setup dialog
• We've tried simply disabling IPN in PP but leaving the email address for payment notifications as per what's set in the Payment API Manager. The Transaction Log still records the attempt, sets the Type as 'Failure', and gives the same 'authentication_error' in the details
• In addition to what's logged in the VB Transaction log, IPN active in PP we have also received a few periodic error messages from PP that report an error and references this URL as a problem:
  • https://hoster3.commander.org/vb/pay...ethod%3Dpaypal
• We've tried this with the system's firewall off and on - no difference. The URL is available from the internet.

I feel like I must be missing something simple but I can't make any progress with this problem.

[Wayne Luke]

https://hoster3.commander.org/vb/payment_gateway.php/?method=paypal

This URL has an extra slash..

https://hoster3.commander.org/vb/payment_gateway.php?method=paypal

[gsm]

No difference. We still get a logged authentication error.

Given we can direct PPs IPN back to our still available v3.x and everything works fine but v5.x consistently fails, I'm coming to the conclusion that PayPal functionality simply won't work in v5.x

Is there anyone that actually has it working and if so, can you share what you had to do in order to get it to work? If you'd prefer to talk send me a PM and I'll either call you or give you my cell number.

[Wayne Luke]

The functionality in vBulletin 3, 4, and 5 are pretty much the same. In vBulletin 5, the way database queries are run has changed but the interaction with Paypal is exactly the same in all three versions.

When you add /payment_gateway.php/?method=paypal to the end of your site URL in the browser, what is returned?

[gsm]

The functionality in vBulletin 3, 4, and 5 are pretty much the same. In vBulletin 5, the way database queries are run has changed but the interaction with Paypal is exactly the same in all three versions.

When you add /payment_gateway.php/?method=paypal to the end of your site URL in the browser, what is returned?

/payment_gateway.php?method=paypal ==> 503 error

[glennrocksvb]

Check the server error logs.

[Wayne Luke]

Something on the server is blocking the script and returning a Service Unavailable error.

[gsm]

OK, we found it. It was binding of SSL to curl. To troubleshoot we downloaded curl and got the ca-bundle file as part of the download and then modified the php.ini to include the path to the file:
curl.cainfo = C:\Program Files\curl\bin\curl-ca-bundle.crt

And it turns out that in PayPay you don't even need an entry in the IPN setup - leave it disabled. Just make sure the email address for payments corresponds to what's set up in vBulletin.