Hi all.
I thought I’d share my solution to a problem I was having. Maybe others are in the same situation and are having the same issue.
Anyway…hope it might help someone.
Background:
We installed a new site with osCommerce and installed the latest version of the Paypal IPN module. (v 2.2 for 2.2MS2). We immediately ran into the following problem.
Our customers were getting an error that said, "This invoice has already been paid" from Paypal and they could not complete the transaction.
After a little looking, we realized we needed the “multi-store/multi-invoice” fix that was included in the contributions files (located in the “help files” folder in the contribution’s tree).
Anyway, we followed the instructions and applied the fix. Check out immediately started working, and customers could complete transactions just fine. However, there was a problem.
All of the orders were sitting in osCommerce with the status of “pending [Paypal IPN]” and would never change. They just sat there and nothing happened.
Well, like many people I’ve seen, this was maddening. Orders coming in...but since all our produces are downloads, customers that couldn’t get their downloads, even though they’d paid. We had to manually update the orders to “Updated” or “Completed” to allow people to get their downloads. The download controller was working…it was the Paypal module/IPN part that wasn’t working.
So…
The problem:
Orders would come in, but anything paid with Paypal would sit as “pending [Paypal IPN]” and would never update. We weren’t getting any error messages.
After a lot of work here’s the solution I found:
The solution:
If you have applied the multi-store/multi-invoice fix that comes with the contribution, there is a flaw in the installation instuctions.
The file has two basic parts.
First, it says to do the following:
In /includes/modules/payment/paypal_ipn.php find this code:
$parameters['invoice'] = substr($cart_PayPal_IPN_ID, strpos($cart_PayPal_IPN_ID, '-')+1);
and change to this:
$parameters['invoice'] = 'K' . substr($cart_PayPal_IPN_ID, strpos($cart_PayPal_IPN_ID, '-')+1);
choose any letter but keep it to ONE letter only!
This is fine. Do it.
Next (and this is the tricky part), it tells you do the following:
In /ext/modules/payment/paypal/ipn.php just after
curl_close($ch);
}
add
$invoice_id = substr($_POST['invoice'],1);
and then replace all occurrences of
$_POST['invoice']
with
$invoice_id
(use a search / replace function if available)
This is the flawed part.
I followed the instructions exactly. I opened the file…found the text in question…around line 84, and added the line. Then I ran a search/replace on the text suggested and replaced all the instances with the new text.
Here is the problem.
It replaced the $_POST['invoice'] in the line I ADDED TO THE FILE with the $invoice_id text. This should not happen. The text you add to the file should be left alone and ALL THE OTHER instances of $_POST[‘invoice’] should be replaced. If you just do a blind S/R on the file and that new line is changed (as I did) the update status process won’t work.
Once I went back into the ipn.php file and replaced line 84 with the correct text from the instructions…it all started working just fine.
Orders come in…marked with “preparing [Paypal IPN]”….customer completes the transaction…..Order status is changed and customer get’s their file.
Problem solved.
I apologize for the long post, but I think the history/process is important. I’d followed the instructions (to the letter I thought) but nothing was working.
Basically you just need to do the search replace FIRST, and then add the new line.
I hope this helps. I’ve seen lots of people reporting similar problems, and I suspect might have done the same thing I did.
I’d like to thank TerraNetworks for their help on this.
Good luck to you all.
Justin Knupp
Stonecreek Media.
New 
