E-Commerce: How Expert Drupal Developers Nail Recurring Payments?

QArea Team by QArea Team on Jun 20, 2017
E-Commerce: How Expert Drupal Developers Nail Recurring Payments?

Do you know what Drupal developers usually do when the task at hand is to make a responsive e-commerce platform in a month’s notice? They lie down and try not to cry. A lot.

I mean, sure, there are thousands of companies willing to kill for a task like the one above, but most of them are from the land that gave us Bollywood and Abibas sneakers. It goes without saying that quality is not their primary concern.

For us expert Drupal developers, however, custom software development in the shortest terms possible is always a challenge hence QArea is not a place for compromises. Especially when it comes to quality.

That noted, the project was ours to deliver so there was no use crying over spilled milk. We aren’t in the business of drama but are rather obligated to deliver top notch solutions to clients within their terms and their budget.

So we had QArea’s team of Drupal experts put a sock in it, tighten up, grab a few coffees (Decaf, gluten-free pumpkin blah-blah latte for Victor and good old fashioned espressos for the rest of the gang. God, Victor is such a princess!) and come up with a plan.

Expert Drupal developers need coffee too;)

The road ahead

Ok, here’s what our Drupal experts had to do. They were to create a mobile responsive ecommerce website with rich content and PayPal payments in tight terms. That doesn’t sound that hard, does it?

Well, the Devil is in the details. Not only did we have to develop the site from scratch, but we were to ensure flawless performance, beautifully presented content, with a nice landing page for each product, e-commerce features like one time payments as well as recurring payments (subscriptions) through PayPal.   

Recurring payments, by the way, were an actual pain in the… neck. We had to create functionality that allows to make personal, automated, subscription-based recurring payments without leaving the site.

In simpler words, users needed the power to order an unlimited supply of given products that would be delivered to them on a monthly basis while automatically billing for the service.

Luckily, the e-commerce platform was to be based on Drupal and you know what they say about Drupal – If you are in trouble, don’t worry. There’s a module that’ll make your pain go away. Always!

You may also like: “Just One More Module” Temptation: It’s A Trap!

How’d our expert Drupal developers implement PayPal?

 Expert Drupal developers can find it challenging to implement recurring PayPal payments.

 

We started playing around with Drupal modules to make them dance to the client’s tunes.

Suddenly we saw a smile on Victor’s face.

Why?

Because he remembered of a fancy little Drupal module he used for e-commerce development a few projects ago.

We are, of course, talking about the Commerce Recurring Framework. This module is literally tailored to provide a rules-, field- as or an entry-based approach for the Drupal Commerce module, especially when it comes to recurring billing.

The Commerce Recurring Framework allowed us to create new recurring product listings. We were also empowered to set distinct intervals and sums to be charged for further billing. We also made orders occur on cron run.

Obviously, the PayPal games were still ahead but we now had a solid background for them to stand on.

Commerce Card on File was the next module our expert Drupal developers chose for this project as a binding bridge between recurrence and vivid billing mechanics.

This module is basically an API designed for storing credit card data meaning the site we’ve created won’t forget who it should charge and when.

This choice, in turn, can raise series of questions regarding the security of personal data or banking credentials users will be uploading into the system. Worry not though, as the module is not designed to actually store credit card numbers – it uses a remote ID of the card to validate upcoming transactions.

Now that that’s done it was finally time for our trio of expert Drupal developers to proceed with the Commerce PayPal WPP. The module is integrated into both Drupal Commerce’s payment and checkout systems.

Commerce PayPal WPP is the professional version of the module and allows for deeper aspects of functionality. For example, the module allows for authorization if need be and, at the same time it allows for authorisation with capture triggered by the checkout.

Just the treat we were looking for.

Alas, not all is gold that glitters. Card on File and Commerce PayPal don’t get along well. There’s absolutely no direct integration between these two modules. We needed a patch.

The patch itself would take a case study of it’s own for us to explain it in more detail. 

You may also like: Features Module – Your Ultimate Path To Uncompromised Order  

Our work outside recurring PayPal payments

How Drupal experts look like after successfully launching another e-commerce platform

 

The rest of the work ahead was child’s play. We forced all of the modules to work together like clockwork. Then we configured our client’s PayPal Pro account to work with recurring payments. And, the last but not the least – we made the site responsive (mobile-friendly) thanks to good old cross-platform HTML5 technologies.

We optimized performance with Redis and Varnish. Drupal eight’s caching system only complimented our efforts in this domain.

A fully operational, out-of-the-box e-commerce platform fit for immediate use and maintenance was the result of our work.

Yay us, right?

By the way: while everything’s fresh on your mind – feel free to contact our team in case you need assistance with professional Drupal development or need a fashion-coffee advice from Victor!

PS: Upon requests of many – here’s Victors exceptional “Supercharge Man-Dev” recipe. Ingredients:

– ½ cup of milk,

– Mashed fresh pumpkin puree;

– Pumpkin pie syrup;

– Vanilla extract.

Mix up the ingredients in a small pan over medium heat or on hot sand and let them simmer for a couple of minutes. Add more milk into the mix and add an espresso. Decorate with cinnamon sticks and a tiny slice of orange.

Enjoy your coffee as well as other treats from our Drupal experts!

USED TECHNOLOGIES: Drupal 8, Drupal Modules, Redis, Varnish, HTML 5

USED TECHNOLOGIES: Drupal 8, Drupal Modules, Redis, Varnish, HTML 5

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