Question

I am currently testing an online store using a custom cart within paypal sandbox.
I am able to go trough all transcation steps properly
setExpressCheckout-> pay -> DoExpressCheckout.

During the DoExpressCheckout step I think it would be the good time to update my database with the order. For that I use the GetExpressCheckoutDetails function to retrieve the content of the transaction.
Sadly this function return everything paypal has to offer but miss the content of my cart. All i can get is the detail of one item. If the transaction involve multiple items i would only get the details of the first one.

Here is my code (mostly taken from paypal samples) :

$token =urlencode( $_REQUEST['token']);
$payerId=urlencode(  $_REQUEST['PayerID']);
$getExpressCheckoutDetailsRequest = new GetExpressCheckoutDetailsRequestType($token);

$getExpressCheckoutReq = new GetExpressCheckoutDetailsReq();
$getExpressCheckoutReq->GetExpressCheckoutDetailsRequest = $getExpressCheckoutDetailsRequest;

$paypalService = new PayPalAPIInterfaceServiceService();
$getECResponse = $paypalService->GetExpressCheckoutDetails($getExpressCheckoutReq);

$details = $getECResponse->GetExpressCheckoutDetailsResponseDetails;

// $details->PaymentDetails->PaymentDetailsItem this array should hold all items details
// sadly it always have 1 element instead of the full content of my cart :(

$orderTotal = $details->PaymentDetails->OrderTotal;

$PaymentDetails= new PaymentDetailsType();
$PaymentDetails->OrderTotal = $orderTotal;

 // 
 Some stuff with payment details
 //

$DoECRequestDetails = new DoExpressCheckoutPaymentRequestDetailsType();

$DoECRequest = new DoExpressCheckoutPaymentRequestType();
$DoECRequest->DoExpressCheckoutPaymentRequestDetails = $DoECRequestDetails;


$DoECReq = new DoExpressCheckoutPaymentReq();
$DoECReq->DoExpressCheckoutPaymentRequest = $DoECRequest;

$DoECResponse = $paypalService->DoExpressCheckoutPayment($DoECReq);

Do i miss a step or call a bad function. Because i tried to print_r every variable i came across and the full content of my cart was nowhere to be found. I find this strange since the ‘orderTotal’ of the transaction match with my original cart. I could store my original order during the SetExpressCheckout step but since paypal already have those values i find it redundant.

As a last resort I did found the content of my cart using $paypalService->getLastRequest() but seriously this is the raw XML returned by paypal and the api should be parsing it properly :(.

Thanks for reading

Answer 1

I had this exact same issue – while the XML returned by PayPal is fine, their PHP SDK doesn’t parse it properly, so you can only ever see the last item in GetExpressCheckout.

I’ve posted a fix for this problem in an issue on PayPal’s GitHub, please check it out:

https://github.com/paypal/SDKs/issues/37