Back Next Week...

 

Back next week... gotta focus on my web development project.  Today was a good day, though -- got Paypal's Instant Payment Notification successfully integrated with my back end. (That sounded a little dirty, didn't it?) It was a bit of a hassle, but finally worked. Ever wonder what happens when you buy, say, access to a web site (via Paypal)?  Here's how it goes (your perspective):

 

1. You sign up at the web site

2. You click on a link to Paypal

3. You make the payment

4. You return & get access to the site.

 

Here's how it works from the web site's perspective:

 

1. Person signs up

2. You send them to Paypal to pay (and they do, hopefully)

3. Paypal sends you a bunch of variables indicating a transaction has taken place

4. That data is accepted by a script/program that you custom write in the language of your choice

5. The script then sends it all back to Paypal along with some more stuff

6. Paypal then sends your server a final yes or no

7. Your program writes the user's data into your database

8. Your server tells Paypal that everything's cool

9. By the time the user finds his/her way back to your site (in a couple seconds), he or she has full, realtime access & you have cash in your paypal account.

 

By my count, there are about 600 ways to do all of that, which means it's probably tough for Paypal to make the experience very user-friendly -- even for programmers. But, after 3 days of tweaking, everything seems to work well enough. Okay, I gotta get back to the grind...