Paypal Express Summary Description Missing

[Martyr23]

Hello everyone,

I am running AbleCommerce 7.0 and we have had a problem getting the Paypal summary description to show up when people use Paypal express checkout (that description box on the left that tells a buyer what they are purchasing and how much it will cost before they login to their Paypal account). My suspicion is that the old URL used to communicate to Paypal has a number of deprecated parameters in it that Paypal no longer recognizes. However, I can't seem to get at the URL to see if this is the case (my guess is that it is in a dll file?).

Can someone confirm that this is the case? Is anyone else still seeing the proper Paypal express checkout product summary on the left?

Thanks!

[Katie]

With Paypal express, the customer leaves the AbleCommerce store and completes the checkout at Paypal's site. The express button would appear within the Minibasket control or on the shopping cart page, so I'm not sure what description you are referring to.

Katie

[Martyr23]

Ablecommerce, in PaypalExpressCheckout.aspx.cs, uses the PaypalProvider class to pass various URLs to Paypal for authorization of items in the basket (and in turn receive a token from PayPal which Able then uses to complete the transaction). These methods are SetExpressCheckout and DoExpressCheckout specifically. As part of these URLs that are passed to Paypal (prior to being redirected to Paypal) ablecommerce should be passing URL parameters to tell Paypal the total amount of the basket, the item descriptions etc. This is the NVP string that I believe is hidden away in that PaypalProvider class. Refer to https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/de ... ngStarted/ for more information on this process.

These descriptions and item amounts are used to populate the "Summary Description" box on the left hand side of PayPal's express checkout login page. The page that shows the order to the user and asked them to login and pay before being redirected back to AbleCommerce. Refer to image below...

able-pp.png

The parameters in the URL that AbleCommerce should be using are things like...

L_PAYMENTREQUEST_n_NAMEm
L_PAYMENTREQUEST_n_DESCm
L_PAYMENTREQUEST_n_AMTm

... etc where n represents the payment number and m represents the list item within that payment.

Now if Ablecommerce 7.0 is still using the deprecated forms...

L_NAMEn
L_DESCn
L_AMTn

...respectively, then PayPal won't recognize them and thus won't display the descriptions in the summary box.

I don't know if this is the case for sure because I can't see inside that PaypalProvider class. All I know is that when a customer comes through express checkout on Ablecommerce and is then redirected to Paypal Express to pay, the order details are no longer being displayed on Paypal. I believe the order is still being passed, but if it is using the old parameters, PayPal is looking for the new parameters and hence won't show the details.

Hopefully that gives you the idea of what I am getting at. If we can see what that URL being sent to PayPal is then we would know if this is the problem. I know the basket itself is still being passed because when we use the parameter useraction=commit the description box will suddenly show us the total basket value.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Katie]

What build of AbleCommerce are you using?

[Martyr23]

We are using build 10863

[Katie]

The version you are using is 5 years old and no longer supported. I did try to search the help site and change logs to see if this specific issue was mentioned, but there have been several bug fixes over the years, and I can't really say one way or the other. I haven't heard of anyone else with this issue either, so I'm at a loss to give you any good news. If upgrading is not an option, then I might be able to get you a discount on the source code since it's so old. Maybe you can fix it yourself? You seem to have a good understanding of what is wrong. If you have a lot of customization, then I do understand that upgrading can be costly. So, please let me know if I can be of further help by sending me a private message with your order number or licensed domain.

Thanks