Linking to contribute pages with checksum

[Chris Burgess]

We've got checksums working for a link to a profile page, but can't get the same working for a link to a contribution profile.

Because contribute pages and checksums use the "id" param, to denote both the contribution page AND the contact ID, whichever ID is placed first is used for both.

I'm not yet sure if the checksum code applies to profiles only, or can be used more generally throughout CiviCRM; knowing this will probably influence what sort of fix it needs.

It shouldn't be hard to change checksum to use cid, but there are many pages where a contact_id is referred to as 'id', so it seems like the contribute page id should be renamed. But then contribute id becomes cid too. Aie!

I'd be interested in gathering some thoughts from the CiviCRM team on how best to approach this.

[Dave Greenberg]

I don't have direct suggestions on this Chris (and I'm not sure I grok exactly what you're trying to do). However, you may want to check out the somewhat related new (2.1) code which allows links folks who've made a Pledge to an existing contribution page so they can make self-service pledge payments.

This is described in the the Self Service Payments section of this issue:
http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-3295

[petednz]

Hi Dave - yes it looks like that incorporates the crux of it and hope chris can dig in to the code the creates the email.

All we are trying to do is simplify the process of gaining donations by being able to send an email that has a link including a checksum so the contact arrives at a Contribution Page that has their Contact Details already filled in.

This means that it is more likely that we can avoid the plague of duplicate contacts that occur if we just push people to the Contributions Pages as they sometimes fill in as Mike or Michael and use different email addresses.

[Dave Greenberg]

Pete - this makes sense. I would think a general solution (combination of a new token for email, plus some additional code / option for the Contribution page) would be pretty straightforward - and could get added to 2.2 codebase. I'm sure Chris will bug us on IRC if he gets stuck :-)