Paypal form limitation with text fields

[dquan97]

Creating a form that uses paypal to check out. The form is collecting information about participants for an upcoming race and allows them to prepay the entrance fee. I wanted about 10 text fields, 2 radio buttons, and a drop-down...and all the info to be passed on to paypal, then to me after the fee has been paid.

So far, I've only been able to have paypal pass on info from 2 text fields. Is there any way around this?

 

[Markbnj]

I don't know anything about PayPal's API, but can you encode the rest of your info into those two text fields?

 

[dquan97]

I saw someone combined multiple drop-downs into 2 fields, but I don't know how to do it with text fields.

 

[Crusty]

The way I've done it in the past is to just collect whatever information you need from them before they click-through to paypal, and store that data in a database. Then when they click through to paypal just pass along an id value that references the data you stored in the database so that when their IPN server sends back the notifications you have someone to match the payment to.

All in all, Paypal's IPN setup is rather lame, especially when dealing with subscription services.

 

[LuckyTaxi]

i LOVE paypal's documentation. google checkout is HORRIBLE. their IPN is ok, I havent dealt with subscription services.

Thanks for the tip Crusty. Im in the middle of redoing out shopping cart and I'm trying to figure out how to save the cart info to our db. The issue is, they are redirected to paypal and the items in their cart are still saved in session. Once I get the "ok" from paypal, i would need to save what they order but couldnt figure out how to do that. I guess I should just reference an ID number or something to cross reference.