Automating Paypal

Is there a prog to extract address/invoice info from Paypal emails?

[j4mes]

Hi all,

I wondered if anyone knew whether there was some sort of script/program available which would automatically extract invoice data/name and address data and send them (with formatting) to the printer?

It would make my life so much easier. :) Alternatively, does anyone know of a better system than Paypal? I am sure there are some which would be worth considering. I'm trading in the UK, btw.

Thanks,

j4

[mifi601]

Are you using IPN?

[sun818]

Are you referring to Mail Extractor? I don't use the service myself, but I've read several book sellers discussing it for their Amazon Marketplace and Half.com listings...

[j4mes]

As far as I could see, Mail Extractor only works for Amazon and Half, and not PayPal, although that sort of thing would be very useful indeed.

mifi601: I'm not currently using IPN, is there any advantage to doing so?

All I'm really after is something similar to Mail Extractor that will do the work of copying and pasting data from the e-mails sent by ppal into tables (for the invoice) and wordpad or whatever for the address label.

Thanks.

[Sarvesh Nagpal]

IPN may help you achieve exactly similar or even better results. Initially it may seem bit hard to set it up but once done, things will get easier for you.

If you have no clue about IPN, it's about server to server transaction. PayPal posts all important variables like name, date, amount, item, etc. directly to your server and then it's upto your server to process raw data into anything (email, invoice, pdf, etc.).

[sun818]

IPN would be the more reliable than e-mail. Every once in a while, I receive a payment via Paypal and there is no e-mail to accompany it. If you do plan on using e-mail, look at some of the e-mail extraction tools available. Some can even launch programs which could be used to send an invoice to the printer.

[dvduval]

Yes, IPN is the way to go. I setup a script a while ago that tracks donation made to my forum, and then says, "We have received $XX.XX so far! Thanks!"

There are all sorts of things you can do with IPN. If you need any help, let me know.

[mifi601]

The advantage would be that you could use all the variables right away from the horse's mouth. IPN is definitely preferable over email extraction! - even if you just write the variables into an email and send them to yourself :) depending on volume you could also download the csv file from paypal and work with the variables from there.

[mifi601]

I have opted out of email notifications of payments received a while ago. often they land in my bulk folder. they are not reliable indicators!

[j4mes]

OK, I'll have a play about with IPN this evening and see how it goes.

Thanks to all you guys for all the helpful advice.

j4

[Leweq22]

Although I am having a bit of a hard time receiving my product from them - I would suggest you take a look at [web.redevelopments.co.uk ] - I think it does exactly what you are looking for!

[PayPalPB]

You want IPN. It's easy to set up. Check the sample code.

Details: [paypal.com...]

[xonio]

Hi folks.

Let's say I did set up and receive IPN from Paypal. In order to extract info and perhaps email a "thank you for your order" email to the purchaser immediately, what steps, skills, programming tools, knowledge would I need?

[PayPalPB]

You can get pretty far with basic CGI programming skills. We provide sample code in Perl, php, ColdFusion, ASP and Java sto get you started. Emailing is pretty easy. Writing to a text file is a bit harder. Writing to a database is quite a bit more difficult.

Check out some of the third party tools and services at [paypal.com...]