XF 1.5 PayPal payment, no upgrade

rickhz

Well-known member
I received a new subscription notice from PayPal this morning so I went and checked the members profile and I saw that he was not upgraded to the paying group. It has worked in the past for other members, but this time it didn't auto update the usergroup.

The site is www.ExplorerForum.com
 
To debug this you will first of all need to make sure that PayPal has completed the payment and they have sent the IPN message:
https://www.paypal.com/gb/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-ipns-history

Clicking on the "Message ID" will give you more information.

If the IPN was sent, and the upgrade still didn't take effect then you will need to look at the Transaction Log in the Admin CP. This will detail any errors XF had with processing the message received from PayPal.
 
To debug this you will first of all need to make sure that PayPal has completed the payment and they have sent the IPN message:
https://www.paypal.com/gb/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-ipns-history

Clicking on the "Message ID" will give you more information.

If the IPN was sent, and the upgrade still didn't take effect then you will need to look at the Transaction Log in the Admin CP. This will detail any errors XF had with processing the message received from PayPal.

Here is what I get from the Message ID page:

Code:
Message ID
07285286FV9817xxx
Date/time created
6/20/2016 06:50 GMT-07:00
Original/Resent
Original
Latest delivery attempt date/time
---
Notification URL
http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/payment_callback.php
HTTP response code
What's this?
Delivery status
Disabled
No. of retries
0
Transaction ID
17X23047RD7050xxx
IPN type
Transaction made
IPN Message

<snip details>


There was no error in the Transaction Log.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
From PayPal's page:

PayPal sends IPN messages to the URL that you specify below.

To start receiving IPN messages, enter the notification URL and select Receive IPN messages below. To temporarily stop receiving IPN messages, select Do not receive IPN messages below. PayPal continues to generate and store IPN messages until you select Receive IPN messages again (or turn off IPN).

Notification URL
????

What do I use for a notification URL?
 
That would appear to relate to a pre-XF payment. You can't adjust the IPNs of existing payments and there are limits on what we can import here. If there are recurring payments happening from your previous forum software, you may need to cancel the payments and have the users re-subscribe in XF.
 
Name: Christopher xxxxxx (This subscriber is Verified)
Email: chrisxxxx @ gmail.com
Subscription Date: Jun 21, 2016
Time: 20:33:47 GMT-07:00
Status: Active
Next Payment Date: Jun 21, 2017
Amount: $20.00 USD
Subscription Terms: $20.00 USD for each year
Item Name: Account Upgrade: Elite Explorer (xxxxxx)
Custom Number: xxx354,1,token,298354,1466566362,d186c2bf605101dfa55ffb3e966be944d8ceaxxx
 
Then where did this callback URL come from?


That IPN URL is not an XF endpoint. It's possible it could be from an add-on such as [bd]Pay Gate.

I'm not even sure how that relates to the issue seeing as this reports the correct payment URL:
Here is what I get from the Message ID page:

Code:
Message ID
07285286FV9817xxx
Date/time created
6/20/2016 06:50 GMT-07:00
Original/Resent
Original
Latest delivery attempt date/time
---
Notification URL
http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/payment_callback.php
HTTP response code
What's this?
Delivery status
Disabled
No. of retries
0
Transaction ID
17X23047RD7050xxx
IPN type
Transaction made
IPN Message

<snip details>


There was no error in the Transaction Log.
 
I have had the same problem.

It is the IPN URL that PayPal has and emails you about, claiming they will cut you off if it is not fixed. I have had the same thing since I changed from vBulletin to XF, last Wednesday. I just changed it tonight, thanks to this thread....some of it anyway.

I originally terminated all of my recurring payments prior to the installation of XF, as instructed. I had no recurring payments, so this was not supposed to happen. It did anyway.
 
I am having this same problem since my transition from vBulletin. Prior to the change-over, I removed ALL recurring subscriptions via PayPal. I have now changed my IPN URL twice, after reading this. After a few days, the messages start over again and PayPal disabled the IPN callback last week. I went back in and updated it and tonight I have started getting the error message again.

I am having to manually update account upgrades. This is not acceptable.
 
If PayPal is still calling back to the old URLs, it will be related to old payments. XenForo specifies the IPN URL explicitly (the specific URL shown within PayPal isn't used by XF, but IPNs do need to be enabled).

If you're positive that all old payments don't have messages you're interested in, you could create an empty file that matches the old URL. You just need to ensure that hitting that URL returns a 200 code (rather than a 4xx or 5xx code).
 
@Mike

So I can remove the URL from the PayPal IPN and just leave it enabled? (EDIT) Nevermind, it won't let me leave the URL blank. I am sending the callback to the XF payment_callback.php, but the error message email is referencing a different URL.

What is the bug that is keeping my members' account upgrades from populating after the PayPal payment?
 
Last edited:
We'd recommend entering the payment_callback.php, but since a URL is passed with the request, the value doesn't strictly matter. Note that you can't change this URL once a payment happens -- this is why old requests still call back to the old URL.

As for upgrades not being processed, you likely want to post a new thread for that as the reasons tend to be specific. You need to look at the transaction log in the control panel and show us what's there. If it's empty, we'd need to see the IPN history within PayPal to show what messages it generated.
 
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