Recurring Payments using PayPal Express and Active Merchant

I needed a payment solution that took recurring payments for my rails app. Most of the tutorials out there use either a US based merchant account provider, or are based in the UK. I guess canadians are out to lunch. Oh, and what's worse was that none of them really touched on subscription based models, or as it turns out, recurring payments.

Caveat: Now i am not here to take credit for what I'm about to write. I only write this post as a 'mashup' of two great men and their tutorials on the subject. I just took these two tutorials and used the good from both of them to come up with what you are about to read.

The fine men who authored these posts

Cody Fauser - Active Merchant extraordinaire

Cody is from all accounts the man, if not only the public face, of Active Merchant. His Active Merchant Peepcode pdf (a must read and only 9 bucks!) is the go to guide for learning all about Active merchant from the man himself.

Jon Baker - Paypal Express Recurring Payments add on for Active Merchant Plugin

From his homepage"As well as leading the Rich internet Application at Trigger Software Ltd, he is CEO and Entrepreneur of Vibrant Apps a small company based in Cornwall that makes useful and useable apps."

On with the show...

Basically, i used the framework from Cody's Paypal Express Payments with Active Merchant for my controller/view actions and I used the plugin extension from Jon's post Paypal Express Recurring Payments using Active Merchant.

The sum of these two parts became what i needed to get a basic subscription for my app, and now for you too.

Gimme the High Level overview nerbie69!

Will do. Oh, and i assume you already know how to create a rails app, and that you are following usual rails behaviour and will know that everything in here is based off of being inside your rails app, when you run any code. This tutorial is probably above beginners so i assume anyone reading this kinda knows what they are doing and are just stuck at how to implement subscription based models easily.

1. Create your Paypal Sandbox developer account and instantiate an API credential from your seller account


2. Install Active Merchant from github


3. Insert Jon Baker's Paypal express Recurring Payments nv . rb file in your new Active Merchant plugin


4. Create your controller and views


5. Test your new subscription model in your browser


6. Pinch yourself... it was that easy.

So there you have it. It's the simple steps version of what you are about to do.

Step One - Create your paypal sandbox developer account

Go to https://developer.paypal.com to set up your paypal developer account.
You can find better instructions on the developer site, but it isn't too hard and out of scope for this tutorial. However, make sure you get the api credentials from the Seller account(_biz). I.e., you must log in as the seller, in the sandbox, and follow Cody's instructions on how to set up the API.

Step Two - Install Active Merchant

Go to github and install the Active Merchant plugin: script/plugin install git://github.com/Shopify/active_merchant.git I'm using the plugin here because it's easier to add a file, which is the next step.

Step Three - Adding the paypal_express_recurring_nv.rb file to Active Merchant

Download or copy and paste the following file paypal_express_recurring_nv.rb and put it in the following directory: /vendor/plugins/active_merchant/lib/active_merchant/billing/gateways/

The plan is to get this into active merchant in a future release. We all have a part in making sure this happens, by emailing activemerchant's maintainers and saying how helpful this was. Plus then we can fix any bugs and extend to make it even better.

Step Four - Create your controller and views in your rails app

From here on out is where i mashed the two tutorials together. First create your controller and views: script/generate controller subscriptions index confirm cancel error

Now add the following, as Cody says, to the top of your application.rb controller
include ActiveMerchant::Billing
Also, don't forget to put your ActiveMerchant into test mode, as outlined in his tutorial.

I'll paste the full controller code, so you can see it in all it's glory. Notice, as Cody says, we didn't need a view for checkout, so that is why we didn't add 'it', to the generate code above.class SubscriptionsController < ApplicationController
def index
end

def cancel
end

def error

end

# Confirmation step is the actual step that sends money.
def confirm
response = gateway.create_profile(999, params[:token], :reference => "34")
if !response.success?
@message = purchase.message
render :action => 'error'
return
end
end
# The checkout method used to pass the values to paypal. The description is shown to the user in their paypal account.
def checkout
setup_response = gateway.setup_agreement("Monthly subscription fee $9.99 USD",
:return_url => url_for(:action => 'confirm', :only_path => false),
:cancel_return_url => url_for(:action => 'index', :only_path => false)
)
redirect_to gateway.redirect_url_for(setup_response.token)
end
private
#Here's the gateway info.
def gateway
@gateway ||= PaypalExpressRecurringNvGateway.new(
:login => 'Seller_232323455_biz_api1@site.com',
:password => 'W32RW53TE64Y7',
:signature => 'A90EWQRLSDA0SA.SAD0FASWEQ4ls0sl20S0SLD0.223.w'
)
end
end


Views

The views are easy to setup and obviously could say anything. Here is what i did, to get a generic subscription message setup:

# Index.html.erb:

< h1 >Site Subscription< /h1>
< p >Thank you for your decision to subscribe to this site.

< p >Your order total is $9.99 / month

< p >
< % = link_to image_tag('https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_xpressCheckout.gif'), :action => 'checkout' % >
< / p >

The error messages can stay the same as what cody has, i believe.

The confirm view really doesn't have to say anything other then Thanks! All the magic happens in the controller when the response comes back. I know that i am probably going to add my own app specific controller functions to this confirm, such as creating their profiles and setting certain site variables, now that they have subscribed to become 'one of the cool kids'

Step Five - Test in your browser and revel at your genius

That heading says it all.

Thanks for reading and enjoy.

I hope that you enjoyed this little tutorial. Subscription handling hasn't been easier thanks to Jon Baker, active merchant and all their hard work.