cart vs expresscheckout in IPN notices

Hi,

Just a quick question. PayPal Express is playing nice (more or less) so far with our cart.

We have had two instances of the order being made and shown in our cart but the downloads did not become available. We have not figured out why just yet.

My question concerns how the cart is recording our sales. When we click on PayPal IPN to see the sales some show "cart" and some show "paypalexpress." I have not been able to figure out why or where the difference comes from.

Thanks

Rick

do you have IPN and express checkout turned on?

ExpressCheckout is when the person clicks the orange "Click to Pay with PayPal express" button and never goes through zencart's account creation process manually and doesn't change their order halfway into it. Basically.. if I want widget A.. and nothing else, i click on the PPExpress button and go through that checkout flow without changing anything (except maybe shipping method). If i finish the purchase like that.. its marked expresscheckout

If I'm in the express checkout and i decide i want to add widget B to the order.. then it will be marked as cart

Basically.. if I want widget A.. and nothing else, i click on the PPExpress button and go through that checkout flow without changing anything (except maybe shipping method). If i finish the purchase like that.. its marked expresscheckout

If I'm in the express checkout and i decide i want to add widget B to the order.. then it will be marked as cartOk, thanks, that makes sense.

do you have IPN and express checkout turned on?Yes, they are both turned on

To add to the above, PayPal IPN transactions typically appear as "web_accept".
In Express Checkout, if there are any line-item details sent to paypal, the type will show as "cart", and no line-item details, then "express-checkout".
Line-item details are sent only if there are no discounts applied and all the math adds up properly according to PayPal's (overly limited and inflexible) formulae.
Thus, if any coupons or discounts apply to the order, it'll come as express-checkout (although other situations may also cause it to appear as "express-checkout", also).
Having only one item vs more-than-one item can also affect it.

^^ actually, in the admin panel it shows "unique" for PayPal IPN payments.. at least it does on mine :P

True, in the Zen Cart admin area, you'll see it as "unique" because the ipn_main_handler realized it needed to insert the record (that's how the PayPal IPN module works). Thus it updated it for processing purposes.
But the raw data that comes from PayPal for those will be web-accept (which you'll see on PayPal reports or transaction details).

I'm just adding additional info in case "that" arises as a question too.

Line-item details are sent only if there are no discounts applied and all the math adds up properly according to PayPal's (overly limited and inflexible) formulae.

So this is the reason that PayPal shows the line items only sometimes?Most of the time there is not a discount applied to our product sales but PayPal is not showing the line items for the most part. What are the other math functions that would determine whether a set of line items are shown?

Thanks

Rick

It's discussed all over the forum.
Here's one:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=59424#post335837