dancamdev

[dreamy dagger]

Hello

So this isn't an issue if customers don't have a Subscription yet, right?

Only if they already have a Subscription, yes?

[cerulean glen]

that's tight

[dreamy dagger]

And you want to update it to a different Price?

And you only want that to happen if payment succeeds, right?

[cerulean glen]

Yes that is right, and if it helps, the price is coming from a stripe product. Maybe it helps if I share a few lines of code, give me a sec

[dreamy dagger]

No need to share code yet

What you likely want to use here is Pending Updates: https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/pending-updates

Have you seen this yet?

[cerulean glen]

not sure, let me check, thank

Are you sugesting this might have to do with the proration_behaviour? I am using default_incomplete indeed

but I'm not sure pending is what I want, I just want the user to stick with the old one if he dismisses the payment sheet (on mobile)

[dreamy dagger]

You already collected the PaymentMethod though, right?

Or is this only for a flow where the customer wants to change their PaymentMethod or something?

[cerulean glen]

No, I have the payment method at this point

[dreamy dagger]

Yeah so you don't need to show the Payment Sheet at all

The customer just selects the new Price they want, then you call your backend to update the Subscription using payment_behavior: 'pending_if_incomplete'

And then if the payment fails the update won't happen and the Sub is reverted back to the previous Price

[cerulean glen]

I understand I don't need it, but I want the user to confirm and potentially change the payment method, just for transparency sake

[dreamy dagger]

Hmmm okay well that makes things much more complicated. But if you want to do that then you could use a SetupIntent instead to collect a new PaymentMethod and then still use pending_if_incomplete

[cerulean glen]

what does the pending_if_incomplete do exactly? I'm not sure I get it from the docs

[dreamy dagger]

It only updates the Sub if the ensuing payment for the new Invoice is successful

[cerulean glen]

that sounds right, what if I remove proration_behaviour and just go with pending if complete, wouldn't that basically wait for the user to confirm before updating the subscription?

[remote matrix]

Hello! I'm taking over and catching up...

[cerulean glen]

Hi Rubeus, that's great, thanks for the help

[remote matrix]

Yeah, if you use pending Subscription updates the pending changes won't apply until the payment is actually made.

[cerulean glen]

therefore the customer_subscription_updated webhook won't be called either?

would you mind me sharing a bit of code, I think this might help

[remote matrix]

You can share code if you have a specific question about it, but we can't do code reviews or tell you if your code will work or not.

The best way to do this is to test your code in test mode.

You can use Test Clocks to advance time in test mode so you don't have to wait for Subscription periods to elapse in realtime: https://stripe.com/docs/billing/testing/test-clocks

[cerulean glen]

Sure I don;t need a code review, but I think it would give you a better sense of how I'm reasoning about this.

taking a step back, the user flow we're talking about is when they manually try to change from one subscription tier to another, this is not upon renewal.

// This endpoint is responsible for getting the payment intent and ephemeral key to show the pyament sheet to the user.

// Getting the product from a passed in id
const product = await stripe.products.retrieve(product_id);

if (subscription_id) {
    // Updating the subscription if one exists already.
    subscription = await stripe.subscriptions.update(subscription_id, {
      items: [
        { price: product.default_price as string },
      ],
      expand: ["latest_invoice.payment_intent"],
      payment_behavior: "pending_if_incomplete",
      payment_settings: {
        save_default_payment_method: 'on_subscription',
      },
    });
  } else {
    // Creating a new subscription
    subscription = await stripe.subscriptions.create({
      customer: customer.id,
      items: [
        { price: product.default_price as string },
      ],
      expand: ["latest_invoice.payment_intent"],
      payment_behavior: "pending_if_incomplete",
      payment_settings: {
        save_default_payment_method: 'on_subscription',
      },
    });
  }


const getPaymentIntent = (subscription: Stripe.Subscription) => {
  const latestInvoice = subscription.latest_invoice as Stripe.Invoice;
  const paymentIntent = latestInvoice.payment_intent as Stripe.PaymentIntent;
  return paymentIntent;
}

return new Response(
    JSON.stringify({
      payment_intent: getPaymentIntent(subscription).client_secret ?? "",
      ephemeral_key: ephemeralKey.secret,
      customer_id: customer.id,
    }),
    {
      status: 200,
    }
  );

[remote matrix]

Yeah, that generally seems like the right approach.

[cerulean glen]

If the user clicks on a button to change their subscription tier, this code will be run and a payment sheet is shown. The main issue is that even if the user dismisses the payment sheet. The subscription has been already updated, while I'd ideally want the old subscription tier to be maintained until the new one has been paid for

[remote matrix]

Yeah, the pending update will do that.

[cerulean glen]

that's great to hear 😅

awesome! I'll test it out then!

[remote matrix]

I encourage you to try it in test mode to see how it works and confirm it behaves as expected for your use case. 🙂