CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaapipaypal
Ryan Amos
Ryan Amos

Reputation: 5452

How to find recent payments in Paypal

I'm trying to add a payment option for an application to allow users to donate/pay for certain features. To do this, I want to have the application periodically check PayPal for recent payments, preferably using a PayPal API.

I've looked at the PayPal IPN, and that seems to require that you own a web-server which PayPal can send an HTTP request to. However, I'm trying to avoid linking the application with a web-server. The other PayPal APIs I have looked at (I'm only looking at official APIs), from what I can tell, don't serve the purpose I seek.

The user experience I'm seeking is that the user will give the application their PayPal email address, donate/pay on the Paypal website to my account (or whoever's account). My application will then check PayPal for the past X donations, and reward the user accordingly if their email address is found on there and that payment has not yet been rewarded. The reason I want to do this is for security. I'll probably be publishing my work as open source, and I don't want someone modifying it and keeping the user's PayPal credentials.

So, a recap, which (if any) PayPal API would I use to check if there are any recent donations to a given account? Ideally, the user will donate/pay money on the PayPal website to an account, and the application will identify that transaction and reward the user appropriately. I intend to do this in Java, so I can use any Java APIs or web APIs that I can subsequently call with HTTP requests.

If I'm going about this the wrong way, or if it's impossible, let me know.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 413

Answers (1)

guyrt
guyrt

Reputation: 927

You can use the TransactionSearch API endpoint referenced here: https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_nvp_r_TransactionSearch to find transactions in a certain date range.

If you need more information about one of the donors, you can use the transactionID you get from the search request to query the TransactionDetails end point here: https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_nvp_r_GetTransactionDetails

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions