Question

We* have a web application, created by Delphi + Intraweb (for the front end/web code management) that manages an ordering process. It acquires ordering information, then sends a transaction request to authorize.net (essentially using their SIM sample code). This works beautifully, and the credit card order is processed.

However, when authorize.net sends the form post back to the relay response url (http://developer.authorize.net/guides/SIM/Receipt_Options/Relay_Response.htm), the Intraweb app blows up. I can see, using TamperData, that the form data is being sent correctly. She can see that her program opens a database connection, then times out.

• I’ve exhausted my google-fu, and haven’t found any examples of Intraweb code being able to accept incoming form posts. (That’s probably all we really need. If we could get the data into the Intraweb/Delphi world, we could then manage the rest.)
• The Intraweb documentation suggests that IW will accept params passed on a URL, but doesn’t mention accepting POST data.
• The authorize.net community forum has an asked/answered post, that says basically “Sorry, we don’t have any Delphi code samples, ask your vendor.”
• Intraweb Tech Support hasn’t been able to help her. (I think they haven’t responded to the request from several weeks ago, but I’m not certain.)
• I suggested that she create a test application stub that mimicked the authorize.net form post, to be sure that the form objects were being properly created. (I don’t really understand what’s happening under the covers of the drag-n-drop form fields, but I poured over the generated source code to try to figure this out.) But a form POST is a form POST, right? I mean, it’s HTTP, not magic. But there were two problems with that. 1.) Intraweb seems to force form field names to all CAPS. 2.) She says that IW won’t accept underscores as a part of the form field name. And of course, we’re stuck with what authorize.net sends, lower-case, underscore separated, and all.

Do you have any insights, pointers to sample code, or advice to chuck it all and move to another solution? We’d greatly appreciate any of the above.

*We = an old-skool Delphi programmer/DBA who knows Delphi inside out but Intraweb “automagically works” and me, a Java programmer and occasional PHP hacker on the other side of the country, who’s allergic to visual IDE’s but trying to interpret teh Internets & the mysteries of HTTP for her. For this particular problem, we appear to be less than the sum of our parts.

Answer 1

Thanks to pointers from @ioan, we’ve got a SOAP solution up and running. It took my colleague a bit of trial and error to write the Pascal code, but she passed it on to me to post in case it saves anyone else some time. Here’s what she ended up with:

procedure TfrmSOAP.btnGetUnsettledReportClick(Sender: TObject);
var
  X : ServiceSoap;
  MyAuthentication : MerchantAuthenticationType;
  MyRequest : GetUnsettledTransactionListRequestType;
  aResponse : GetUnsettledTransactionListResponseType;
  msg : string;
  i : integer;
begin
  inherited;
  //Call the service
  X := GetServiceSoap(false);
  //create some variables/parameters to pass back and forth
  MyAuthentication := MerchantAuthenticationType.Create;
  MyRequest := GetUnsettledTransactionListRequestType.Create;
  aResponse := GetUnsettledTransactionListResponseType.Create;
  try
    //assign values to the MerchantAuthenticationType parameter
    MyAuthentication.name_ := APILoginTest;
    MyAuthentication.transactionKey := TransKeyTest;
    //request a list of unsettled transactions
    aResponse := X.GetUnsettledTransactionList(MyAuthentication, MyRequest);
    //check to see if the request was successful
    if aResponse.resultCode <> messagetypeenum(0) then
        begin
          ShowMsg('Error');
          ShowMsg(aResponse.messages[0].text);
        end;
    //step through the list, and display i, InvoiceNo, and LastName.
    for i := 0 to high(aResponse.transactions) do
       msg := msg + IntToStr(i) + ') ' + aResponse.transactions[i].invoiceNumber
              + '  '+ aResponse.transactions[i].lastName + #13;
    ShowMsg(msg);
  finally
    MyRequest.Free;
    MyAuthentication.Free;
    aResponse.Free;
  end;
end;

She also sends the reminder to be sure you’re using the right info when running tests vs. production: “I was using the URL in the downloaded WSDL. Which is for production accounts. You must use a different one for test accounts. So I kept getting an empty list, and thought it was error in my code, not getting a response.”

Thanks again for all of the help and suggestions!