Prepopulate paypal fields

[chadleyd]

Prior to waiting to send the customer to the purchase windows in paypal - I capture some data about the customer (most is not relevant to the purchase - minus the first and last name). I would like to pass this in the url to e-junkie and have the redirect to paypal auto append that to the paypal fields. Is that currently possible? See the following link on the paypal allowed fields:



https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=pdn_xclick_prepopulate_outside



Although I think with the payment form - you can only populate First Name, Last Name, and Email.



Thanks



Chad

[E-junkie_Guru]

Normally, the buyer's name and email would be collected during checkout, and this would be known-good data since it comes from the buyer's payment-account profile (i.e., PayPal checkouts would pass the buyer's PayPal account-login email, which must be a valid address).



That data would be passed back to you in your Sale Notification message and saved to your E-junkie Transaction Log for future reference, and the buyer's name and email would also be saved to the Buyer Group list for any product they purchased, so you could use our Updates/Newsletters feature to send a message to all previous buyers of a chosen product:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.updates.htm



You can also have the order data submitted to a custom script at your end for further processing:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.integration.htm



However, if you still need to collect data upfront and pass that through your purchase button, you might have some custom scripting in your page that could append the data to your button URL as described in the "Changing Behavior" section of this page:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.custom.purchase-buttons.htm

[chadleyd]

Tyson-



Thank you for your reply. I am aware that I can receive a certain amount of data back on the purchase from Paypal (and via the custom "thank you" pages, etc from E-Junkie). I do have gather some additional information prior to the purchase of the download. The issue is that there is several overlapping fields (such as the first and last name, address, etc) - but there are several other fields that I am looking to record that are not present in paypal.



Your assumption that buyers will have paypal accts (or want to create one) is not a very good solution. What happens when the user does not have an account on Paypal? What I am trying to accomplish is not forcing the user to have to retype a lot of information (ie name, address, email, etc) in more than once to place an order. Which paypal allows for on various fields that can be passed in the URL when accessing the paypal pages (please read the link that I previous provided).



As for the data fields that I can receive back from the purchase - how do I get fields such as the address? It seems through the E-Junkie website, I am only seeing the name and email for the customer.



Thanks



Chad

[E-junkie_Guru]

A physical address would only be collected during checkout if the order contained any items with Shipping enabled in your Seller Admin. If no items have Shipping enabled, then PayPal (or other payment processor) is not triggered to collect or pass back the buyer's shipping address.



We can only support standard uses of our service as-documented. Development might have a better notion than I of what "off-label" hacks might possibly work, but we have only tested our standard, documented procedures and can only promise that those would work reliably and predictably. You're welcome to attempt custom hacks to add nonstandard functionality, but that would be entirely up to you to experiment with and troubleshoot on your own. E.g., you could try passing additional fields to PayPal by appending them to the button URL as additional &name=value parameters, then maybe use your own custom scripting to append those parameters in your page dynamically based on the buyer's activity on your site.



The PayPal page you referenced appears to document ways of passing pre-populated data for PayPal new-account sign-ups. E.g., if you pass those fields and the buyer does not already have a PayPal account but decides to enroll for one during their checkout, then those fields would fill in that data in their new-account profile. It does not say those fields could be used to pass or pre-populate data with the order for non-PayPal-account checkouts (i.e. when PayPal offers a direct-card payment option without a PayPal account), nor would it override any data already saved to a PayPal account holder's profile.

[chadleyd]

Tyson-



I have followed your suggestion and check the box for the "shipping/buyer's address" for the item. Which now allows me to see the address when I purchase the item via E-Junkie / Paypal. I am playing around with the redirect to a thank you page on my site (see http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.redirection.htm). Is there any way that I can get the buyer's address at via this interface?



As for auto filling the payment form for Paypal, I have tried your suggestion to append GET variables at the end of the button's URL. For example, here is the link that I need to access the "Buy Now" feature to redirect via E-Junkie:



https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?i=DCS-002&c=single&cl=50804



If I try to append "&first_name=Chad" at the end of this so the URL is:



https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?i=DCS-002&c=single&cl=50804&firstname=Chad



This additional GET variable does not appear to be passed on from E-Junkie to the Paypal. I am assuming that you are not converting there to POST variables, and I do not see them in the URL being displayed for Paypal. An example of what is being displayed for Paypal is:



https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=flow&SESSION=LONG_STRING&dispatch=LONG_STRING



What I would need to accomplish is having the paypal url be:



https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=flow&SESSION=LONG_STRING&dispatch=LONG_STRING&first_name=Chad



Am I doing something wrong when I am creating the button's URL to send my customer to the E-Junkie page?



Thanks



Chad

[chadleyd]

Tyson-



It looks like I might have found what I need for the first part. Would I want to use the "Common Notification URL" (http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.integration.htm)? Will this allow me to receive the request to process this additional data, as well use the my custom "Thank you" page?



Thanks



Chad

[E-junkie_Guru]

After payment is completed, we would submit all order data collected to your Common Notification URL (for all orders) and/or Payment Variable Information URL (for specific products). That would be a POST action, similar to a typical HTML form submission. The page you linked documents the data fields we would submit.



Thank-you page redirection would append some data parameters to your URL when we redirect the buyer there, typically so you could echo that data back to the buyer in your page, but it's not a reliable way of passing data to your system since not every buyer would necessarily continue past the end of checkout to even reach any thank-you page.

[chadleyd]

Tyson-



Thanks for the clarification on the difference between the two. Looks like I would want to do both the Common Notification URL (and/or Payment Variable Information URL) and the Thank you page redirection. I appreciate your help with this.



As for my second question, any ideas on it. I have copied it below.



Thanks



Chad

ChadleyDAs for auto filling the payment form for Paypal, I have tried your suggestion to append GET variables at the end of the button's URL. For example, here is the link that I need to access the "Buy Now" feature to redirect via E-Junkie:



https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?i=DCS-002&c=single&cl=50804



If I try to append "&first_name=Chad" at the end of this so the URL is:



https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?i=DCS-002&c=single&cl=50804&first name=Chad



This additional GET variable does not appear to be passed on from E-Junkie to the Paypal. I am assuming that you are not converting there to POST variables, and I do not see them in the URL being displayed for Paypal. An example of what is being displayed for Paypal is:



https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd= flow&SESSION=LONG_STRING&dispatch=LONG_STRING



What I would need to accomplish is having the paypal url be:



https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd= flow&SESSION=LONG_STRING&dispatch=LONG_STRING&first_name=Chad



Am I doing something wrong when I am creating the button's URL to send my customer to the E-Junkie page?

[E-junkie_Guru]

I can only refer your other concerns to Development, as that involves a low-level area of backend detail I never need to deal with and thus don't know much about. However, from what I have read of the PayPal documentation page you referenced earlier, those parameters cannot be passed to pre-populate data in an order; they can only be passed to pre-populate data in PayPal's new-account enrollment page.

[chadleyd]

Tyson-



Yes that documentation is for the "new account enrollment", I just could not find the documentation for the "Payment form". However, I have tried those same parameters in this "Payment Form", and it worked for me.



I would appreciate you sending this request to the e-junkie development team. Is this something that I should be requesting separately?



Thanks



Chad

[onantho]

I do cpa offers online which at times allows an affiliate to prepopulate the the link with email address. Can anyone tell me what I'm missing? I do everything according to instructions but no success. Is there some extra software that I need apart from the prepopulation link? Help