Can't get Paypal Standard IPN to work

[npemtiv]

I hope someone can shed some new light on this. I've read everything I can find on getting IPN to work, but it's still always in Pending when testing using sandbox. The actual test transaction goes through and is posted in the buyer and seller sandbox account, but the item is never marked complete in the Joomla CiviContribute component.

In Paypal Sandbox the buyer's account is set to use IPN with http://www.mysite.com as a placeholder.
Auto Return is on.
Payment Data Transfer is off.
Going to:
http://MYSITE/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/ipn.php returns "Could not get module name from request url".
Oh...and even though I've searched everywhere, I can't ever seem to find a CiviCRM error log of any kind.

I am not running Civi or Joomla on a local server. It's on a production site in a development area so firewalls, etc...aren't the problem. I've installed, uninstalled, reinstalled, updated, uninstalled, etc...ad nauseum and followed the Paypal Website Payments Standard page's requirements to a T. I still can't figure out what could be wrong. What am I missing??

[Donald Lobo]

1. the error: "Could not get module name from request url" is normal if you call that script without any params

2. CiviCRM.log should be under: media/civicrm/upload/CiviCRM.log

3. can you check your apache access logs and see if paypal is making a callback to the server. i.e. is ipn.php being invoked with some arguments from a paypal machine

lobo

[npemtiv]

Hi thanks for your help. I knew the error given by ipn.php was normal, but I wanted to include everything I had checked. Looking at the raw Apache log I found one entry:

[24/Feb/2009:20:36:58 -0700] "POST /administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/ipn.php?reset=1&contactID=292&contributionID=12&module=event&eventID=1&participantID=14 HTTP/1.0" 404 1931 "-" "-"

It looks like it pulled a 404 error? This was so long after I had run the transaction that I might have already gone on to try something else and had possibly already deleted that contribution in the system so that might be why. I ran probably 15 test transactions over a day period though and this is the only mention I see anywhere. Thoughts?

[npemtiv]

Also checking the Civilog the only entry is the one when I invoked ipn.php without any arguments. It's clean other than that.

[npemtiv]

Running a new contribution I get an immediate ipn post from paypal:

[25/Feb/2009:06:42:00 -0700] "POST /administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/ipn.php?reset=1&contactID=2&contributionID=11&module=contribute&membershipID=14 HTTP/1.0" 404 1879 "-" "-"

If I POST the command myself:
http://www.mysite.com/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/ipn.php?reset=1&contactID=2&contributionID=11&module=contribute&membershipID=14

I get: Failure: Missing Parameter

Not sure if that helps.

[Donald Lobo]

can you try accessing the url:

http://www.mysite.com/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/ipn.php?reset=1&contactID=2&contributionID=11&module=contribute&membershipID=14

as an anon user. most likely it will fail. u'll need to figure out why and allow that to succeed (i.e. no 404)

lobo

[npemtiv]

When I access the url as anonymous now I get "Failure: Missing Parameter" on that page.

Checking Civilog shows:

Feb 25 08:34:16  [info] $GET = Array
(
    [reset] => 1
    [contactID] => 2
    [contributionID] => 11
    [module] => contribute
    [membershipID] => 14
)


Feb 25 08:34:16  [info] $POST = Array
(
)


Feb 25 08:34:16  [info] Could not find an entry for payment_status in POST

[Donald Lobo]

hmm. i'm out of ideas as to why it returns a 404 when paypal sends an IPN.

lobo

[npemtiv]

I might have figured out the 404. I had the /administrator folder password protected instead of one particular file in /administrator. The heirarchy trickled down. I never got a 404 because I was always logged in. Once I closed my session and POSTED the above URL I couldn't access the file either. Removing the htaccess protection allowed the file to be accessed, but I still get:

Failure: Missing Parameter

[npemtiv]

Ok so since I've removed that I can make contributions and memberships are marked as NEW instead of Pending. The contribution is only used for membership dues. Nothing shows up under CiviContribute anymore after making a payment. Is this normal behavior if the contribution is really only membership dues? It also doesn't tally anything up on the main CiviContribute page. If I use Find Contacts -> Locate test contact -> View Memberships I can see NEW and source is marked as Online Contribution. Is this how you know it's complete? Is there a way to pull up that specific payment as see a COMPLETE marking or something? (Or does New = Complete)? On the contact's profile under the contributions tab it says "No contributions have been recorded from this contact.". I'm guessing again that this is because the "contribution" is used for membership dues??

Sorry if I'm being a pain, but I'm actually making progress it seems!

[Donald Lobo]

Are those test contributions (i.e. you're doing this in test-drive mode)? We dont show test contributions (we should not be showing test memberships either). However you can find them from CiviContribute >> Find Contributions - check the "Find Test Contributions" box.

lobo

[npemtiv]

You are awesome. The 404 problem was it. I did a find test transactions and looked. The four tests I ran are showing complete. As far as I can tell it's running great now! Thanks!