Tobq

[torpid wedge]

Easiest way to do this going forward is to use Customer objects and associate each invoice with a customer on creation: https://stripe.com/docs/api/invoices/create#create_invoice-customer

[smoky creek]

@torpid wedge are you a bot

[torpid wedge]

No why

[smoky creek]

idk the name

doens't stripe automatiaclly create a customer on subscriptions?

im handling the "invoice.paid" event

not sure how I'm supposed to know who this "invoice" is for?

[torpid wedge]

No customers aren't automatically created when you create a subscription. In fact, you need to pass the customer to the subscription creation request: https://stripe.com/docs/api/subscriptions/create#create_subscription-customer. Maintaining customer objects is how you keep track of who the invoice is for

[smoky creek]

so the invoices are literally meaningless if I havent setup customers?

In fact, you need to pass the customer to the subscription creation request
I think I created sessions without customers

[torpid wedge]

Oh you're using checkout

Yeah you can configure checkout to do that

[smoky creek]

whats the difference between "checkout"?

[torpid wedge]

https://stripe.com/en-gb-us/payments/checkout

It's the Stripe hosted payment page

[smoky creek]

oh i can build my own?

[torpid wedge]

Yeah

That would be the payment element

[smoky creek]

so stripe can be invisbile?

nice

worked on similar stuff at a fintech I worked at

[torpid wedge]

You can have your own payment form that uses the Stripe API, yes

[smoky creek]

so with checkout, is it not creating customers?

i assume it internally uses that subscription api

[torpid wedge]

https://stripe.com/docs/api/checkout/sessions/create#create_checkout_session-customer_creation

[smoky creek]

which you said requires customers

[torpid wedge]

Depends on that setting ^

https://support.stripe.com/questions/guest-customer-faq

There's also a dashboard concept of guest customers

[smoky creek]

ah its using guests?

i see

[torpid wedge]

But if you need to tie invoices to individual customers, I highly recommend creating the customer objects

[smoky creek]

yeah i think ill do so

create on customer per user in my app

[torpid wedge]

Yep that's recommended

[smoky creek]

so in all:

start subscription

if (existsCustomer(userId))
    customer = getCustomer(userId)
else
    customer = createCustomer(metadata = userId)
startCheckout(customer, product)

invoice paid event

customer = getCustomer(invoice.customer_id)
user = customer.metadata

@torpid wedge

[torpid wedge]

Yeah logically that makes sense

[smoky creek]

@torpid wedge how would you implement existsCustomer?

would I have to store this relation in my own database?

or can I search the stripe customer database?