Support

August 19, 2015 at 1:04 pm

Hi Paul,

I think you’re correct, this isn’t a widespread problem as we haven’t heard from other users about this. Since PayPal Pro does not use PayPal IPN, there shouldn’t be any effect in re-sending an IPN for a PayPal Pro transaction. Can you first check to see if cURL is enabled on your server?

You can also check the payment logs by going to Event Espresso > Payment Methods > Logs and check for payment log entries there. If there are any errors in those logs it will be helpful to know what they are.

August 19, 2015 at 2:29 pm

RE:

However, looking at the logs, it shows 5 transactions with separate ID numbers, all for the same transaction number (30825) the one transaction that EventEspresso successfully recorded as paid.

It turns out those are actually log items. A single transaction can 3-5 log entries because each item logs a specific part of the back and forth between your server and the payment gateway.

RE:

The other two are completely missing.

Can you check for PHP errors in your PHP error logs at the times the other two registrations were made?

August 19, 2015 at 5:05 pm

Sure you can email them to support at eventespresso.com.

We were discussing some other PayPal related things and it was pointed out to me that if the purchaser did not have a PayPal account, and when closed their prompted to create any account after paying, PayPal doesn’t send the IPN.

Here’s the information that was pointed out to me:

When paying with PayPal Standard, if the customer pays without making a PayPal account and closes their browser when presented with the invitation to make one, your store sits in limbo and never gets the order (due to a bug in PayPal’s logic, which they’ve not fixed yet). If they DO have OR make a PayPal account, you get the notification and the order is stored in your database.
**IF there is any problem in PayPal’s ability to communicate to your server, you will never see the order in your store (or receive the confirmation email from your store), because it relies entirely on PayPal’s server being able to talk to your server in order to store the order.

https://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?70-whats-the-difference-between-paypal-standard-express-and-pro

So that could be a potential reason for why you’re not getting all of the payment notifications from PayPal.

August 20, 2015 at 8:43 am

Hi Paul,

I got the access log you sent. This could be helpful if I can compare it with the PHP error log, can you send the error log? Along with that, can you let me know about what times the two registrations in question were made?

August 20, 2015 at 6:40 pm

Are PHP errors being logged at all?

August 21, 2015 at 7:05 am

Paul the link to the PHP info page should never be advertised on a public forum. I’ve removed the link and highly recommend that you remove that script from your server. For the sake of your server’s security, PHP info should never be made publicly available. Along with that, it doesn’t help me because what I really need to look at are some PHP error logs to find any possible reason why PayPal’s IPN isn’t updating some transactions on your site.

If you do not have a PHP error log, you can set your WordPress config file to generate one going forward. Your wp-config.php file will have this line of code:

define( 'WP_DEBUG', false );

You change it to true and also set it to not display errors and then log the errors by adding two more lines:

define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );
define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );

Then you’ll have a log file located in wp-content directory that you can send us.

August 25, 2015 at 1:37 pm

Hi Paul,

I combed through the logs and at those times nothing PHP error wise stands out as far as an error that would prevent EE from receiving the IPN. It may help to add some text to the PayPal Instructions on your site that instructs the purchaser to be sure to return to your site from PayPal after they’ve paid. It’d be good to let them know they need to return in order to ensure their spot is held and get their receipt.

You can add instructions to the Description field in Event Espresso > Payment Methods > PayPal Standard. The instructions you add there will display on the page when someone selects to pay with PayPal.