Need help with Virtual Merchant module

jbfromca:

Question to the group, Nova is trying to sell us "Virtual Merchant software" Is this needed for this module to work? I thought all you need is the Virtual Merchant Account

JB

Virtual Merchant is Nova's Internet Payment Gateway; it's not software you install or anything. This module is designed to link Zen Cart to Virtual Merchant; so yes, you'd need a Virtual Merchant Account in order to really use this module

ThePatch:

Virtual Merchant is Nova's Internet Payment Gateway; it's not software you install or anything. This module is designed to link Zen Cart to Virtual Merchant; so yes, you'd need a Virtual Merchant Account in order to really use this module

I understand that I ned a virtual merchant account - but nova is trying to sell us "software" which costs $179. Do we need to buy this software, or is that their way of doing a setup fee on the virtual merchant account?

jbfromca:

I understand that I ned a virtual merchant account - but nova is trying to sell us "software" which costs $179. Do we need to buy this software, or is that their way of doing a setup fee on the virtual merchant account?

I'm sure it's a setup fee. Typically payment gateways have a setup fee and a monthly fee.

Hi,
I have been trying to test the VM mod and am having some problems. When I go through the test server, I do get an approval response back, however, when I switch to production, I am having problems. If I use the 4111111...etc. test number, it goes to the confirmation page but then I get an error message:
Credit Card Processing Error: INVALID CARD
There has been an error processing your credit card!
INVALID CARD
An UNEXPECTED PROCESSING ERROR occurred, please contact [email protected] with this information and date/time of occurrence!

If I use the test number provided by the Virtual Merchant support people (5000 3000 2000 3003), then I don't even get to the confirmation page. It just tells me that the card starting with 5000 is incorrect.

The VM support people say that both test numbers should work with their system.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can fix this?

Thanks

Hi,
Disregard the last post. I figured out how to do what I wanted to do.

This is a new question. I am trying to display a credit card transaction receipt on my checkout_success page so customers can print it out from there. I have used this before with another payment module I developed so I know it works, however, I am having some problems doing it with VM.

Since most of the info I want to have on the transaction receipt is found in the logs, I am assuming that the info does get posted back from VM. Is this correct?

This is what I have done. I have included the following code in the virtualmerchant.php file in the "function after process" section.

// Save some variables to be used to display transaction receipt on payment_success page.
global $_POST, $_SESSION, $db, $messageStack;
$_SESSION['ssl_invoice_number'] = $response['ssl_invoice_number'];
$_SESSION['total'] = $response['total'];
$_SESSION['ssl_merchant_id'] = $response['ssl_merchant_id'];
$_SESSION['ssl_transaction_type'] = $response['ssl_transaction_type'];
$_SESSION['date'] = $response['date'];
$_SESSION['ssl_approval_code'] = $response['ssl_approval_code'];
$_SESSION['ssl_txn_id'] = $response['ssl_txn_id'];

I used the variable names that were in the VM developer's guide. Are these the correct variable names to use? I noticed in the VM code that some of these variable names are changed to other ones so I am not sure I am using the correct ones. Am I?

I originally used $_POST instead of $response in these lines but that didn't work so I changed it to $response. Am I using the correct format? I have used $_POST on another mod I did and it worked for that one, but looking at the VM code, it seemed that the $response command was used to get the VM postbacks.

On the checkout_success page I am using the SESSION variables to print the values. For example, $SESSION['ssl_txn_id'] to print the transaction id.

I would appreciate any help anyone can offer.

Thanks

toboldlygo:

Hi,
Disregard the last post. I figured out how to do what I wanted to do.

This is a new question. I am trying to display a credit card transaction receipt on my checkout_success page so customers can print it out from there. I have used this before with another payment module I developed so I know it works, however, I am having some problems doing it with VM.

Since most of the info I want to have on the transaction receipt is found in the logs, I am assuming that the info does get posted back from VM. Is this correct?

This is what I have done. I have included the following code in the virtualmerchant.php file in the "function after process" section.

// Save some variables to be used to display transaction receipt on payment_success page.
global $_POST, $_SESSION, $db, $messageStack;
$_SESSION['ssl_invoice_number'] = $response['ssl_invoice_number'];
$_SESSION['total'] = $response['total'];
$_SESSION['ssl_merchant_id'] = $response['ssl_merchant_id'];
$_SESSION['ssl_transaction_type'] = $response['ssl_transaction_type'];
$_SESSION['date'] = $response['date'];
$_SESSION['ssl_approval_code'] = $response['ssl_approval_code'];
$_SESSION['ssl_txn_id'] = $response['ssl_txn_id'];

I used the variable names that were in the VM developer's guide. Are these the correct variable names to use? I noticed in the VM code that some of these variable names are changed to other ones so I am not sure I am using the correct ones. Am I?

I originally used $_POST instead of $response in these lines but that didn't work so I changed it to $response. Am I using the correct format? I have used $_POST on another mod I did and it worked for that one, but looking at the VM code, it seemed that the $response command was used to get the VM postbacks.

On the checkout_success page I am using the SESSION variables to print the values. For example, $SESSION['ssl_txn_id'] to print the transaction id.

I would appreciate any help anyone can offer.

Thanks

Hello Toboldly,

I guess it depends on what you're trying to do with the information.

Here are a few pointers...

As far as the results strings passed back:

• The ssl_invoice_number is merely the calculated "new_order_id" (database order number +1) and, if I remember, is already displayed on the checkout success page.

• The 'total' you referenced, I don't believe is what you're looking for -- nor is it available as a result from VM. It is actually the order total as calculated. You might want to use this instead:

rtw819:

Hello Toboldly,

I guess it depends on what you're trying to do with the information.

Here are a few pointers...

As far as the results strings passed back:

• The ssl_invoice_number is merely the calculated "new_order_id" (database order number +1) and, if I remember, is already displayed on the checkout success page.

• The 'total' you referenced, I don't believe is what you're looking for -- nor is it available as a result from VM. It is actually the order total as calculated. You might want to use this instead:

Sorry for the incomplete post. My PC had an issue and gave me some grief.

As I had started to say...

You might want to use instead this for the real order total:
number_format($order->info['total'] * $currencies->get_value('USD'), 2, '.','')
(Requires global $order and $currencies)

• You may not want to provide your users with your Merchant ID#. I would not recommend doing that, and in fact strongly discourage it.

• The ssl_transaction_type is always going to be "CCSALE" - so this doesn't buy you much. (At least for the foreseeable future the module will only handle Credit Card Sales as there are no immediate plans to support debit/gift cards through this VM Payment Module as those both would add another entire layer of complexity I'm not ready to tackle at this point in time.)

• I don't believe VM responds with a 'date' response. The date reported in the debugging log is the current system date. So this as a variable would not be helpful. So, you could effectively use the current date/time such as what's used in the log: $today=date('M d Y H:i:s T'); (That way they match.)

• The 'ssl_approval_code' result is actually already displayed to the user at the completion of the payment process in the Zen Status green success bar (messageStack) at the top of the checkout results page along with the APPROVED (or DECLINED in RED) key word. You could certainly re-use this if you wanted.

• The 'ssl_txn_id' is VM's internal transaction ID number, which may also be another field you may not want to present to users as it arguably would not be of much use to them. The approval code (not the transaction code) is what folks see generally. However, that is up to you.

Also, FYI, the variables were "re-assigned" to strip off unneeded line feed codes from the ends of the lines as the responses were interpreted from the payment gateway.

If you were going to use the variables, you'd need to store them in the "PROCESSING and ERROR HANDLING SECTION" of the module code as that is the only time those variables (server responses) would be available. Be sure to "store" them outside of the debug "if"'s so that if you turn off debugging at some point the variables are still available for the post-transaction checkout_success. You'll want to grab them just before this comment in the code:

        // MAIN DEBUG INFORMATION ROUTINE

I think, however, after looking more closely (but not exhaustively) that there does not appear to be an easy way to pass this information back through to the checkout success page. It seems to me, from what I can figure out at a glance, that this may be a tad outside the box for the payment module / checkout success page arrangement as-is, as it was meant (from what I can tell) to merely report a success (or failure) of the payment process. I'll have to dig a little deeper when I have some spare time.

Hope it helps some.

Todd

Hi rtw,
Thanks for all your information. I appreciate it.

I was wondering about whether I should display my Merchant Id number. I thought maybe it would not be a good idea, however, in Nova's "Merchant Operating Guide" it says that merchants must provide customers with a transaction receipt that contains the following info.:

• transaction date
• transaction amount
• authorization code
• merchant name and address
• merchant ID number

This is the reason I wanted to display it on the payment success page because I thought it was required. I will have to call Nova to confirm what they want.

I did figure out how to display the information on the checkout success page. In case anyone is interested, here is how I did it:

I put the following lines at the very end of the "function before_process" section:

// Save variables coming back from gateway so it can be used to print transaction receipt on checkout_success page
$this->invoice_number = $new_order_id;
$this->order_total = $response['ssl_amount'];
$this->order_date = date('M d Y H:i:s T');
$this->auth_code = $response['ssl_approval_code'];
$this->transaction_id = $response['ssl_txn_id'];

I then put the following lines at the beginning of the "function after_process section":

// Save transaction info to be used to display transaction receipt on checkout_success page.
global $_POST, $_SESSION, $db, $messageStack;
$_SESSION['ssl_invoice_number'] = $this->invoice_number;
$_SESSION['total'] = $this->order_total;
$_SESSION['date'] = $this->order_date;
$_SESSION['ssl_approval_code'] = $this->auth_code;
$_SESSION['ssl_txn_id'] = $this->transaction_id;

I then modified the checkout_success page so these $_SESSION variables would display on the checkout success page. It works well to do it this way.

Hi again,
In case anyone is interested, I called Nova and they said that I should include the Merchant ID number on the transaction receipts. They said it would not be a security risk to do that and that it is required to have it on the receipts. They also said I should display the truncated card number on the receipts as well, so I guess I will have to add that to my code.

Thanks

toboldlygo:

Hi again,
In case anyone is interested, I called Nova and they said that I should include the Merchant ID number on the transaction receipts. They said it would not be a security risk to do that and that it is required to have it on the receipts. They also said I should display the truncated card number on the receipts as well, so I guess I will have to add that to my code.

Thanks

I think this is taken care of in the emailed receipt?

In the instructions for this module it says to:

*** AGAIN, be sure to LOCK DOWN your logs directory, ask your web hosting provider for assistance or alternatively disable the logging if you do not know how to lock down that directory.

Does that mean changing the CHMOD? And change it to what?

Thanks!
H

And on another note - do I need to log into my VM demo account at all?

Part of a reply from NOVA this morning:

"It may also be necessary for you to change the CVV2 information since
this was recently updated. I have attached a word document with this
information."

You may want to check and see if you have the updated info for you cart.

I have installed the Virtual Merchant module, but once I insert the credit card information and go to confirm the order, I get the following error

2013 Lost connection to MySQL server during query
in:
[select customers_email_format from zen_customers where customers_email_address= '[email protected]']
2006 MySQL server has gone away
in:
[select count(*) as total from zen_sessions where sesskey = 'b7c88ebbb32fb0afb03a913bd8d7215d']

Warning: Unknown(): A session is active. You cannot change the session module's ini settings at this time. in Unknown on line 0

I have absolutely no idea what this means, and am pretty clueless when it comes to MySQL. Does anyone have any advice?

Thank you!

scitrenbaum:

I have installed the Virtual Merchant module, but once I insert the credit card information and go to confirm the order, I get the following error

2013 Lost connection to MySQL server during query
in:
[select customers_email_format from zen_customers where customers_email_address= '[email protected]']
2006 MySQL server has gone away
in:
[select count(*) as total from zen_sessions where sesskey = 'b7c88ebbb32fb0afb03a913bd8d7215d']

Warning: Unknown(): A session is active. You cannot change the session module's ini settings at this time. in Unknown on line 0

I have absolutely no idea what this means, and am pretty clueless when it comes to MySQL. Does anyone have any advice?

Thank you!

This is an odd error, I don't know that it's related to the module, try putting in a fake order using the credit card mod that comes with Zen; what version of Zen are you using?

heliosMD:

Part of a reply from NOVA this morning:

"It may also be necessary for you to change the CVV2 information since
this was recently updated. I have attached a word document with this
information."

You may want to check and see if you have the updated info for you cart.

To my knowledge everything is correct in the module; we knew what changes were coming so we made sure they were in there

heliosMD:

And on another note - do I need to log into my VM demo account at all?

Well yes, you'll need to get the PIN supplied to you from Virtual Merchant

heliosMD:

In the instructions for this module it says to:

*** AGAIN, be sure to LOCK DOWN your logs directory, ask your web hosting provider for assistance or alternatively disable the logging if you do not know how to lock down that directory.

Does that mean changing the CHMOD? And change it to what?

Thanks!
H

Mine is set to 777, try that.

ThePatch:

Mine is set to 777, try that.

Thanks!!

I just called NOVA and they said this needs to be added or changed:

Anybody know about this?