IPN function of PayPal

[averroes]

I have a problem with the IPN function of PayPal. Paid transactions do not appear in records and I always receive an error message (someone on the forum has the same problem, but nobody answered his question). Also in other parts of the journal, the fee/subscription etc. maintains visible as not paid or awaiting online payment. In paypal payments are correctly registered. After reading on the forum I tried out the following:
URL in paypal https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr or http://institucional.us.es/averroes/ind ... Paypal/ipn (leaving blank, a suggestion on the forum, is impossible)
I tried everything both in sandbox and in real paypal, as I read in some comments that sandbox doesn’t work very well with OJS, but sandbox or real paypal gave me the same results.
Can someone help me with this? I use Open Journal Systems 2.3.6.0
Example of the error message:
Open Journal Systems has encountered unusual activity relating to PayPal
payment support for the journal Journal of Environmental Solutions. This
activity may need further investigation or manual intervention.

This email was generated by Open Journal Systems' PayPal plugin.

Full post information for the request:
Array
(
[transaction_subject] => 18
[payment_date] => 05:10:42 Nov 19, 2011 PST
[txn_type] => web_accept
[last_name] => Vanderlinden
[residence_country] => ES
[item_name] => Subscription Fee (individual subscription - 1 year)
[payment_gross] =>
[mc_currency] => EUR
[business] => averroes@us.es
[payment_type] => instant
[protection_eligibility] => Ineligible
[verify_sign] =>
AUkau1FwogE3kL3qo1vGTARqlijQAqvg8XkMI2NizIuArSZNYREj9FSd
[payer_status] => unverified
[tax] => 0.00
[payer_email] => eva_vanderlinden@yahoo.com
[txn_id] => 2RY26826H6445131R
[quantity] => 1
[receiver_email] => averroes@us.es
[first_name] => Eva
[payer_id] => FW244SWKDFEVL
[receiver_id] => L3HJBUKPF4CZN
[item_number] => 2
[handling_amount] => 0.00
[payment_status] => Completed
[payment_fee] =>
[mc_fee] => 0.37
[shipping] => 0.00
[mc_gross] => 0.50
[custom] => 18
[charset] => windows-1252
[notify_version] => 3.4
[ipn_track_id] => 2UuTS2tHmv58K4HQkdtztA
)


Additional information (if supplied):
Confirmation return:

Server vars:
Array
(
[CONTENT_LENGTH] => 783
[CONTENT_TYPE] => application/x-www-form-urlencoded
[DOCUMENT_ROOT] => /home/httpd/html
[GATEWAY_INTERFACE] => CGI/1.1
[HTTP_HOST] => institucional.us.es
[PATH] => /bin
[PATH_INFO] => /jes/payment/plugin/Paypal/ipn
[PATH_TRANSLATED] => /home/httpd/html/averroes/index.php
[QUERY_STRING] =>
[REDIRECT_STATUS] => 200
[REMOTE_ADDR] => 66.211.170.66
[REMOTE_PORT] => 7127
[REQUEST_METHOD] => POST
[REQUEST_URI] => /averroes/index.php/jes/payment/plugin/Paypal/ipn
[SCRIPT_FILENAME] => /home/httpd/html/averroes/index.php
[SCRIPT_NAME] => /averroes/index.php
[SERVER_ADDR] => 192.168.90.91
[SERVER_ADMIN] => portaladm@us.es
[SERVER_NAME] => institucional.us.es
[SERVER_PORT] => 80
[SERVER_PROTOCOL] => HTTP/1.0
[SERVER_SIGNATURE] =>
[SERVER_SOFTWARE] => Apache/2.2.21 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.21
OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 DAV/2 PHP/5.2.17 mod_perl/2.0.5 Perl/v5.8.8
[UNIQUE_ID] => Tseq2H8AAAEAAFHPrPUAAAAF
[PHP_SELF] => /averroes/index.php/jes/payment/plugin/Paypal/ipn
[REQUEST_TIME] => 1321708248
[argv] => Array
(
)

[argc] => 0
)

[michael]

Hi averroes,

To confirm, are you using your Paypal merchant account email for the OJS Paypal account settings, as opposed to your merchant ID? Although it's in relation to OCS, there's some additional information at this post that may be potentially relevant. Please let me know.

Cheers,
Michael

[averroes]

Hello Michael,
Yes, I used the email (=my paypal ID I think), so that's not the problem in my case...
Hope you have any solution?
Best regards,
Eva

[michael]

Hi Eva,

This has been difficult to track down as I can't reproduce the issue exactly without your PayPal account and settings.

However, based on my testing with different currencies I would recommend that you review your IPN settings in your PayPal account, in particular the currency settings:

ipn_preferences.png (43.15 KiB) Viewed 1508 times

You can find your IPN settings under Profile => Instant Payment Notification Preferences

For example, if auto-conversion is not enabled, payments will show up in PayPal but will require manual intervention on your part to accept them:

paypal_transactions.png (13.53 KiB) Viewed 1508 times

Can you please review the above and let me know if that fixes the issue for you?

Cheers,
Michael

[averroes]

Hello,
In my real paypal account I had my settings as you indicate. In my sandbox account I couldn’t find this (strange…). Even so I tried to make a payment in the sandbox and in the real one. Both were successful inside paypal, but they were not recorded in de OJS.
When using the sandbox IPN simulator (test tool), everything seems to work out well (IPN successfully sent), but once again: I do not receive anything in records.
Trying to understand the IPN history, I found an extended document on paypal:
https://cms.paypal.com/cms_content/US/e ... NGuide.pdf
I looked up the IPN History in my paypal account. As explained by paypal: When the message has been sent, your server’s response to the HTTP POST is used to update the HTTP response code field. A value of 200 indicates that your server successfully received the IPN message. (this is my case).
Hope this will help to find a solution?

[michael]

Hi Eva,

Since you're receiving the PayPal error email from OJS, your IPN response is in fact coming back from PayPal, but one of the integrity checks that OJS performs on the PayPal IPN response is failing.

OJS performs the following integrity checks:

1) A duplicate transaction was received (not likely)
2) The queued payment entry is missing (not likely, but you can check the queued_payments table)
3) An unhandled payment status was received (not the case based on error email)
4) An unknown confirmation response was received (not the case based on error email)

5) Transaction integrity:
a) queued payment amount (subscription cost) is different from the amount paid at PayPal (i.e. 'mc_gross')
b) queued currency (subscription currency) is different from paid currency at PayPal (i.e. 'mc_currency')
c) queued email (OJS PayPal seller account email) is different from payment receiver email at PayPal (i.e. 'receiver_email')

Can you please investigate the above (especially #5) and see if any of these apply?

Cheers,
Michael

[averroes]

2) The queued payment entry is missing (not likely, but you can check the queued_payments table)
Where can I see the queued_payments table? I couldn’t find such a thing neither in OJS or in Paypal. The payment status of all payments received in paypal is “completed”.
5) Transaction integrity:
a) queued payment amount (subscription cost) is different from the amount paid at PayPal (i.e. 'mc_gross') -> this is ok
b) queued currency (subscription currency) is different from paid currency at PayPal (i.e. 'mc_currency') -> both in euro
c) queued email (OJS PayPal seller account email) is different from payment receiver email at PayPal (i.e. 'receiver_email') -> email is the same.

[michael]

Hi Eva,

You'll need direct access to your database to check the queued_payments table.

Assuming you're running MySQL, this can be either via a command-line client or a web-based tool like phpmyadmin.

Cheers,
Michael

[averroes]

Hi Michael,

I checked the queued_payments table, and all payments I did by paypal until now are registered in the table.

Best regards,
Eva

[michael]

Hi Eva,

At this point, we have exhausted the most obvious sources of where the problem may be.

The PKP does offer commercial services for in-depth troubleshooting on your server if you'd like to try to debug this issue further. It's a form of personalized support for your specific journal and hosting setup and one means of supporting the PKP.

Please PM me if you'd like to go this route and we can go from there.

Cheers,
Michael

[averroes]

Hello Michael,

Thanks a lot for your help so far. At this moment we will focus on other topics. If, in a future, we decide to troubleshoot this we will contact trough the commercial service.

Kind regards,
Eva

[aruncs]

Hi
In my website, the payment plugin doesn't work properly. It used to have both paypal and manual payments and both of them had the option of deleting or upgrading them. I deleted a few days ago the papal module and ever since I was not able to get it back. Even if I restore the plugin installation in the payment directory it doesn't show anymore the option of deleting it. In addition, I used to be able to disable the paypal options in editing and now I cannot. Now I need to get the option available, so that I could disable that. It is very Urgent!!!.

Thanks
Arun