problem with some paypal transactions going "missing"
| Project: | lm_paypal |
| Version: | 6.x-1.x-dev |
| Component: | LM Paypal Base |
| Category: | bug report |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | Unassigned |
| Status: | active |
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Hey there
we are using an older version of 6.x-1.x-dev, from Nov 30 2008 (most recent files are actually datestamped Nov 29). many custom modifications have had to be made, to suit our application, and i am well aware that i will have to integrate these manually when i upgrade. that's ok, i know how to do that, and that's not the problem. Note that these mods have nothing to do with the actual code that processes an incoming IPN.
the problem we are having is this: once in a while (maybe once a month or less, when there's about 300 transactions per month going through, on the average) there's a paypal transaction that shows up in the PayPal system but there's absolutely no record of that transaction number (ie: the 16-digit alphanumeric tag that gets put in the subscr_id field in lm_paypal_subscribers) either in lm_paypal_subscribers or in the watchdog table. however, the PayPal system says that the payment went through, so we have to take the client's word for it and create a manual subscription transaction.
this is a little scary because there's no indication whether the error is in lm_paypal or in PayPal itself, or something up with the mysql on our webhost's server, or... ?
any ideas, anyone?
cheers,
Peter 'Fish' Fisera
GoatVirus Technologies
http://goatvirus.com/resume
#1
I have no idea. Could your drupal user ids be bigger than 65000? There is a known deficiency with older versions of LM Paypal in this area. Since you have already modified the module, to debug, you could add a line very early in the IPN processing that dumps the entire incoming request to a file/log. Then you can see if Drupal is receiving the request at all (and potentially, you can replay the incoming IPN).
#2
update: i added some watchdog() function calls further up in the code, to capture details of every single IPN... and in these rare cases, it seems that these IPN's are simply not reaching our system at all (though we did have a couple of cases of them being sent 48 hours later, which PayPal has still not given us an explanation for).
this problem is still unsolved, but at the moment, my gut instinct is that this is NOTHING to do with LM Paypal, and is either a Paypal issue or more likely something to do with the stability of our webhosts (there have been other strange occurrences recently that definitely point to some kind of server errors).
So if you are wondering if LM Paypal is worth installing, I would say "yes"! We have processed a LOT of transactions with it (approx 300 per month for the last year), with very very few errors (and those may not be the fault of the module, as I said). Though you may need to make some modifications if the module doesn't have all the features you need.
cheers
Peter 'Fish' Fisera
GoatVirus Technologies