#Ninja man
late quiver
slow pumice
Hi there
That is all possible.
You'll just want to be aware of the Customer Portal limitations: https://stripe.com/docs/customer-management/get-started#limitations
In case any of those come into play with the types of Subscriptions you are creating
But overall, what you are describing is totally possible with Checkout + Customer Portal
marble wyvern
So what my issue is:
If a customer today start to subscribe to productX, then tomorrow the customer starts to subscribe to productY.
Then in the customer portal ONLY productY will be visable as i never passed in any checkout session id etc....
slow pumice
Nope that's not how that works. Customer Portal will show multiple Subscriptions. You never have to pass a Checkout Session ID to the Customer Portal.
marble wyvern
Hmm
So how would stripe know that once the customer start to subscribe on productY, that the customer also subscribes to productX ?
hearty tendon
Hi 👋
I'm stepping in for @slow pumice . The Customer Portal is aware of the active subscriptions for that Customer.
I would recommend building a quick test integration to see how it behaves.
marble wyvern
I did that and it did not include the prevoius subcription.
So basically i create the checkout like this:
So once i create another checkout for productY, how would the customer portal remember productX?
hearty tendon
Screenshots of the code aren't really helpful at this point. Can you share a Customer Portal session ID?
marble wyvern
Actually check this out, i already discussed about all this already: #1020005106491609188 message
The reason i get back to this issue, is becuase i wonder if there is another solution than storing the users Customer ID
hearty tendon
A Customer Portal needs to be instantiated with a Customer ID. How are you creating one without it?
marble wyvern
Like this:
hearty tendon
That's a checkout session. You said earlier you were talking about the Customer Portal
marble wyvern
Yeah, to be able to have multiple of active subscriptions in the customer portal, don't i need to pass in the Customer ID to the checkout session if the user already have a subscription?
This is the part where i want to skip storing the Customer Id somewhere
hearty tendon
It explains this in our docs:
If blank for Checkout Sessions in payment or subscription mode, Checkout will create a new Customer object based on information provided during the payment flow.
So by not setting the Customer ID in Checkout, you created a new Customer that was only subscribed to Product Y
marble wyvern
yeah this is the issue..
And is it no way for stripe to know if the customer have a active subscirption without passing the Customer ID?
What if i use this? https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout/pricing-table
hearty tendon
No, we would need the Customer ID, that's why we say it that way in the docs. The pricing table will create a new customer as well.
marble wyvern
Ah well i guess i need to do that.. So how do i pass the Customer ID using the pricing table?
hearty tendon
The pricing table does not support using a Customer ID currently.
marble wyvern
hmm so then what happens if the same customer buys 2 things? how can we manage this?
hearty tendon
Checkout is still the best option in that case
Passing the Customer ID as part of the session
marble wyvern
ah well alright so:
must create my own pricing tables
must create an account for the user
must store the customer ID
Damn feels like quite alof of work hehe😅
hearty tendon
Okay here's an example of how you could do it without "storing" much data. If you collect the Customer's email as part of the Checkout session it will be included when the Customer is created. So you have your user enter their email as part of the HTML form before they get redirected to the Checkout Session. You then use the Customer List API to retrieve any existing Customer records with that email. https://stripe.com/docs/api/customers/list
If there are any, use that Customer ID when creating the Checkout Session & Customer Portal. If not, pass the email when creating the Session https://stripe.com/docs/api/checkout/sessions/create#create_checkout_session-customer_email
marble wyvern
So like this?:
Start your subscription -> enter your email -> check if email exists in Customer List API -> start the checkout session with the existing customer Customer ID
hearty tendon
Well don't you use the Checkout Session to start the Subscription? Or are you talking about the flow from your user's perspective?
marble wyvern
Yeah from user perspective
hearty tendon
Okay, as long as you created the Checkout Session with the Customer email if a Customer wasn't in the Customer List results then I think that would work
That's the first time the Customer gets created, so then when they come back later you can match them to the existing Customer record
marble wyvern
Okay, using this approach, wouldn't a small risk be someone that use another ones email for the checkout? I mean this could maybe be solved by a unique link being sent to the email? BUT that would interupt the funnel a bit tho..
hearty tendon
The only method I can think of that would guarantee a single person per Customer record would be to set up some sort of Authentication and Identity framework. But if you don't want to even store Customer IDs then I think the email approach is your best bet.
marble wyvern
yeah agree. The issue here isn't the authentication it self but the security if it.. as this client needs everything to be super secure and to make authentication super secure, you need proper server administarions, database security and so on.
Do you know about any DB+ Auth for Next JS that handles ALL security for this?
tepid iris