Does ActiveMerchant support Subscription Based transaction

Question

I am trying to integrate ActiveMerchant in my rails app. I have certain plans that if subscribed limit the user access. As you all guyz might be knowing what a subscription base

Answer 1

Better late than never, huh?

The actual master branch of ActiveMerchant contains a recurring class integrated into both the PaypalGateway and PaypalExpressGateway.

Here's a demo snippet which works. I'm just not sure about a few points (I will update the answer as soon as I figured them out), which are:

• Just setting the billing agreement does not show any price regardless of setting :initial_amount. Including an Item will show the item's price above the billing_agreement[:description]. So I am not sure how this affects capturings, which is what I am testing these days.

• IPN notifications. They're missing in the following snippet. Update following...

  class PaymentsController < ApplicationController
    include ActiveMerchant::Billing
  
  
    # GET /subscriptions/:id/checkout
    def checkout
      payment_request = PAYPAL_EXPRESS_GATEWAY.setup_purchase(@subscription.price_in_cents,
          :billing_agreement => {
              :type => 'RecurringPayments',
              :description => 'Subscription agreement',
          },
  
          :currency => 'CHF',
          :no_shipping => true,
          :allow_guest_checkout => true,
          :allow_note => false,
          :initial_amount => @subscription.price_in_cents,
          :locale => 'de',
          :ip => request.remote_ip,
          :return_url => url_for(:action => :confirm, :only_path => false),
          :cancel_return_url => url_for(:action => :cancel, :only_path => false),
          # Looks like :notify_url is not used here, but in the next section 
      )
  
      if payment_request.success?
        redirect_to PAYPAL_EXPRESS_GATEWAY.redirect_url_for(payment_request.token)
      else
        # Render something informal
        render :text => payment_request.inspect.to_s and return
      end
    end
  
    # POST /subscriptions/:id/confirm 
    # params having token and PayerID
    def confirm
      profile = PAYPAL_EXPRESS_GATEWAY.recurring(@subscription.price_in_cents, nil, 
          :description => 'Subscription agreement',
          :start_date => Date.tomorrow, # PayPal throws an error if the date is not in the future
          :period => 'Year',
          :frequency => 1,
          :amount => @subscription.price_in_cents,
          :currency => 'CHF',
          :initial_amount => @subscription.price_in_cents,
          :auto_bill_outstanding => true,
  
          :token => params[:token]
      )
  
      # profile has profile_id and profile_status. remember status because this gets updated via IPN.
      @debug = {:params => params.inspect.to_s, :profile => profile.inspect.to_s }
  
      # Render something informal
      render :text => @debug.to_s and return
    end
  
  
    # implement instead of just log
    def notification
      log = Logger.new 'log/ipn.log'
      log.debug params.inspect
      render :text => params.inspect.to_s and return
    end
  
  
    # Private methods omitted
  
  end
  

You want to have a look into PaypalRecurringAPI and PaypalExpressGateway / PayPalGateway to see which options are processed and in which place of the xml request.

edit The newer, revised screencast about paypal and recurring billing is done with a separate paypal-recurring gem. Maybe this helps if you can't get it to work with ActiveMerchant.