Dear Click2Sell.EU blog readers,

this post will be about a new Click2Sell system feature: Instant order notification by API.

It will be a long post, so let me present an index of the post:

1. Introduction to Click2Sell API;
2. How it works;
3. Notification structure;
4. Script sample;

Introduction to Click2Sell API

Some advanced Click2Sell.EU members asked for a feature that would 'pass' a transaction's information to the specified URL location or the thank-you page. Why would merchants need this feature? It is simply not enough for some services to have their customers "simply" redirected to "thank-you" pages after a successful purchase. Membership websites, licence based softwares or just any product with some verifications usually need some data from payment processor in order to allow their customers to access purchased products/services.

Instant notifications allows merchants to take their business to the next level as they provide extra functionality, security and save merchants' time.

Even ordinary sellers could consider about automation of things happening after a successful purchase. Just let me give you some examples:

• you're selling an ebook. After a successful sale your script could accept instant notification and add your customer's email address to your mailing list.
• you have a forum with some paid content there. After a successful sale your script could automatically make changes in user account to allow your customer to access paid content.
• you sell a service based on subscriptions. By monitoring our instant notifications you can track if any of your subscribers hasn't missed his/her payment (and automatically unsubscribe if there is a failed payment).

As you can see, notifications are used to transmit transaction/order information from the system server to the merchants' own servers/scripts. Because of our members requests, we have developed a fully working API.

How Click2Sell API works

Click2Sell API works via HTTP POST method. When the transaction occurs: sale, refund, subscription re-bill or cancellation, our system posts a transaction information to the specified URL location – to your servers and scripts where they 'listen' for such notifications.

Basically speaking, Click2Sell API notification contains:

• Detailed buyer information;
• Transaction information (payment processors ID, date, time and so on);
• Click2Sell related information (transaction ID, username, affiliate name, etc.).

All merchants who want to use Click2Sell API have to visit: For Merchant –> My Products –> Edit Settings (click on a certain product) –> API Settings

On this page, you will be able to turn on/off API notifications. In order to turn these notifications on, you need to enter the location URL of your script or thank-you page that 'listens' for a data and then put a tick on the checkbox where it says: Enable/Disable remote server's notification.

Then our system will send all order information to your specified location.

As you can see, there is an additional 'Secret key' field. This field is optional. However, if you want to send the notifications and then verify if they really come from Click2Sell.EU, use this field. Just enter your desired secret keyword or use 'Generate' link under this field for our system to generate it. When this option is used, our system takes and merges the acquirer_transaction_id id with this key (secretkey + "_" + acquirer_transaction_id) and MD5 it. The variable is passed with 'checksum' paramether via API for your server to verify.

Moreover, in order to allow you identify the customer after a sale is made, API can post via POST method the acquirer_transaction_id to your specified Thank-you page. This feature can be turned on/off in the API Settings section.

Each product requires a separate API configuration. We made this in order to achieve the higest flexibility for our merchants.

Click2Sell API Parameters passed to your specified URL

As you can see, we pass 24 different variables with our API to your servers, so you can do whatever you want with the order data: collect into your databases for the future use.

Click2Sell API Sample code

This code is an example code how to accept our sent notifications.

<?php

 /* reading click2sell notification parameters to local variables */

 $acqTransId = urldecode($_POST["acquirer_transaction_id"]); /* transaction number in acquirer system */

 $c2sTransId = urldecode($_POST["c2s_transaction_id"]);  /* click2sell transaction number */

 $purchaseDate = urldecode($_POST["purchase_date"]); /* format: yyyy-MM-dd (year-month-day) */

 $purchaseTime = urldecode($_POST["purchase_time"]); /* format: HH:mm:ss (hours:minutes:seconds) */

 $paymentType = urldecode($_POST["payment_type"]); /* Paypal, Moneybookers, Google Checkout, credit card */

 $transactionType = urldecode($_POST["transaction_type"]); /* Sale, Refund, Subscription */

 $paymentStatus = urldecode($_POST["payment_status"]); /* OK or Failed, now Always sends OK since we send notification only on successfull cases now */

 $subscriptionStatus = urldecode($_POST["subscription_status"]); /* in case of subscription: New, Recurring, Cancel*/

 /* information about the buyer */

 $buyerName = urldecode($_POST["buyer_name"]); /* name */

 $buyerSurname = urldecode($_POST["buyer_surname"]); /* surname */

 $buyerAddress = urldecode($_POST["buyer_address"]); /* address */

 $buyerCity = urldecode($_POST["buyer_city"]); /* city */

 $buyerProvince = urldecode($_POST["buyer_province"]); /* province */

 $buyerZip = urldecode($_POST["buyer_zip"]); /* postal code*/

 $buyerCountry = urldecode($_POST["buyer_country"]); /* country name */

 $buyerEmail = urldecode($_POST["buyer_email"]); /* email */

 $buyerPhone = urldecode($_POST["buyer_phone"]); /* phone */

 /* product information */

 $productPrice = urldecode($_POST["product_price"]); /* price: amount + currency – "###.## CUR", CUR is a currency code: USD, EUR or GBP */

 $productId = urldecode($_POST["product_id"]); /* product id in click2sell */

 $productName = urldecode($_POST["product_name"]); /* product name */

 $merchantName = urldecode($_POST["merchant_name"]); /* name of the merchant */

 $merchantUsername = urldecode($_POST["merchant_username"]); /* click2sell login name of the merchant */

 $merchantUsername = urldecode($_POST["affiliate_username"]); /* click2sell login of the affiliate in case of the affiliated sale */

 /* … process the necessary data …. */

?>

However, I must say that this feature is intended for use by people with some programming skills. You may need to hire someone to do all the coding, but be sure to consider what automatic notifications could improve in your business!

We tried to explain how Click2Sell API works as simple as possible. But there might still be some misunderstandings. So if you have any questions, thoughts or just need some help, please, post a response/comment under this post or just e-mail Click2Sell.EU customer support.

We will do our best to help you!

Egidijus & Vytis

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