Online Payment Verification (Scenario)

[chop]

I have other "Larry" books but not the one that relates to this topic. So if this scenario happens to be answered in his book, let me know and I'll purchase it.

 

I've been hired to design a form and mySQl database to accept donations for a non-profit (.org) from donors and to produce a "donor" page listing names and the level(gold,silver etc.) of their contribution. So I need to collect donor name,date, amount contributed etc (the usual).

 

This isn't difficult involves a little manual input by an administrator of .org. After receiving the e-mail from payPal that $200 has been received from John Doe, one can go into the database and mark John Doe as having donated $200. Then the donation page on the .org site can be generated using the database information.

 

The question is, is there any way that this can be automated so there's no need to due the manual input? You could just trust John Doe and ask him on the form how much he "intends" to donate and hope that he follows through. Of course we can see the potential problems here. Paypal isn't talking to the .org database and can't stick in the amount paid for us.

 

Surely many others have run into this problem and I'm thinking that there's a way to do it somehow short of accepting credit card payments on the .org site -no thanks.

 

appreciate any suggestions

 

chop

[Jonathon]

Have you looked at paypal donate buttons.

Surely you could set a level for gold silver etc and if the value in db was greater vthen you'd dynamically show what level they're donation was?

[tryingtolearn]

Hi Chop,

The PayPal IPN is what you are looking for.

You just need to write a script to capture the notification and use that to update your db.

That way it eliminates the need to just hope that X follows through w/ the payment.

[chop]

Perfect. A listener. Thanks so much.

 

chop