[plt-scheme] Paypal integration?

On Dec 28, 2008, at 21:12, Christopher Rasch wrote:
> Are there any tutorials that detail how to integrate paypal with a  
> scheme-powered website?

What do you mean by integration?  Are there other systems that offer  
integration, and if so, how do they work?

I recently had to put some PayPal Buy Now buttons on a website for a  
conference.  These were the steps I had to do:

- login to Paypal with conference's credentials
- create a bunch of buttons for different registration options
- - each button was basically an HTML form referencing a PayPal image  
and action
- I put the buttons in the conference's website in the appropriate  
places

When users pressed the buttons, they went to the PayPal site.  Just  
before that happened, I saved user info so we knew that users had gone  
to PayPal to pay.  Later we checked PayPal emails and web pages to see  
if they had paid.

Integration to me means that PayPal communicates payment info directly  
to the conference database, or sends me some XML that can be validated  
and processed.  That is not what we did, because I didn't see a good  
way to do that.  Instead, we received email messages from PayPal,  
checked their payment pages, and updated our payment database  
ourselves.  When PayPal sends an email to the conference  
administrator, the message can be parsed, but the email must be  
verified, and automatic recording of payments should have a human to  
check that the automation was correct.

Geoff