picklepaws - setup for customer | Stripe Developers | Page 1

rugged pebble May 4, 2022, 7:25 PM

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Hello! Just starting a thread for you -- I'll review and respond as soon as I can 🙂

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hey there, can you share a failing request ID so I can understand waht you're trying to do?

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https://stripe.com/docs/api/request_ids

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like req_123

robust dune May 4, 2022, 7:26 PM

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We have the same question over here!

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TLDR; trying to create a customer, subscription and gather credit card info (that will become the customer's default payment method) all in one form. Rather than having one page to collect customer info --> stripe.createCustomer + stripe.createSubscription --> show payment gathering page

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OP - i can start another thread if this isn't what's going on for you.

lethal willow May 4, 2022, 7:30 PM

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@robust dune that's exactly what's going on for me. I don't want to create the customer in Stripe until I know the user isn't going to back out when they realize they don't want to provide payment info.

robust dune May 4, 2022, 7:30 PM

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+1 +1 us too. We were just wondering how to "clean up" customers who abandon their checkout

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or...worse, go back to the initial page, change something and submit again..

lethal willow May 4, 2022, 7:31 PM

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@rugged pebble here is the request id: req_8vAJuawD6YQL0l

rugged pebble May 4, 2022, 7:31 PM

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So instead of what you're both trying to do, just confirm the setup intent without a customer

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Then the first action to take with that payment method is to attach it to the customer you create

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https://stripe.com/docs/api/payment_methods/attach

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Then set as the invoice default PM, or set for a subscription etc as needed

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are you using the payment element or card element client integration?

lethal willow May 4, 2022, 7:34 PM

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PaymentElement over here, I'm calling stripe.confirmSetup(...) - will this call return a payment method ID to me?

robust dune May 4, 2022, 7:34 PM

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We're using the payment element

rugged pebble May 4, 2022, 7:34 PM

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Ok then yea, what i said

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with the card element you could just defer the setup intent creation until after the card details were filled in, for example, and provide the client secret at the end just before confirming

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But that isn't an option for the payment element, currently

lethal willow May 4, 2022, 7:36 PM

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Ahh, once the SetupIntent gets confirmed, it'll have a PaymentMethod attached to it, I see.

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Okay, I think I know how to move forward from here then. Thank you so much @rugged pebble!! And good luck to you with your flow @robust dune 🙂

robust dune May 4, 2022, 7:37 PM

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I think we're all set here as well. Thank you both. Good luck to you too @lethal willow

rugged pebble May 4, 2022, 7:38 PM

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double NP

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👍 👍

robust dune May 4, 2022, 7:52 PM

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Hmm: "You cannot confirm this SetupIntent because it's missing a payment method. Update the SetupIntent with a payment method and then confirm it again."

rugged pebble May 4, 2022, 7:55 PM

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Well that's a separate issue, how are you confirming?

robust dune May 4, 2022, 7:57 PM

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await stripe.setupIntents.confirm(setupIntentId, {});

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I create the setup intent initially like: const setupIntent = await stripe.setupIntents.create({ payment_method_types: ["card"] });

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then I use the clientSecret and setupIntentId from that initial request to render my checkout page for the customer

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the "Submit" button on the checkout page will:

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create a customer

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try to finalize the setup intent --> this is what we thought your instructions were

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use the paymentMethodId resulting from the finalized setup intent above in order to create a new subscription for the customer

rugged pebble May 4, 2022, 8:04 PM

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Sure, but when you use confirmSetup in the client, the customer needs to have filled out their payment details (card details)

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don't confirm server side, you need to confirm in the client as the guide illustrates, to collect those payment details

robust dune May 4, 2022, 8:05 PM

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The reason we're doing server side is that client side confirm will do a redirect rather than return the result of the confirmation.

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Or are you saying that we need to let the redirect happen..and then on the confirmation page is where we'd be doing the subscription creation?

wraith river May 4, 2022, 8:06 PM

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yes

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In theory you would create the subscription first

robust dune May 4, 2022, 8:08 PM

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wraith river In theory you would create the subscription **first**

A customer id is required to create the subscription - so we can't create one without it.

wraith river May 4, 2022, 8:10 PM

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I didn't read the whole backlog but in theory that's not the recommended flow

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what we recommend is to
1/ Create a Customer
2/ Create a Subscription to the right Price with payment_behavior: 'default_incomplete'
3/ Client-side confirm the underlying PaymentIntent (if a payment is needed) or SetupIntent (if there's no upfront payment) to collect payment method details

lethal willow May 4, 2022, 8:26 PM

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@robust dune you can (sort of) turn off the redirection using redirect: if_required - if you're supporting payment methods/countries where the redirect will occur, then I imagine you'd have to build the redirect page out to handle the rest of your flow.

robust dune May 4, 2022, 8:43 PM

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Ok - I think I finally have something that's "working" but I have a few questions

lethal willow May 4, 2022, 8:43 PM

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@wraith river we're both doing a flow where we're collecting payment details from the user upon registration and we want to prevent creation of customers for incomplete registrations.
If we do it the recommended way and create a customer up front, then when user backs out of registration upon deciding that they don't want to provide payment, there would have to be some sort of cleanup job that handles dealing with that unused Customer - could do it on an unload of the client, but if the user just closes their browser, I don't think that works. I suppose you could use some metadata on the Customer to indicate that they never completed their registration, and then if they ever return try to fetch the customer that matches their email instead of creating a new one.
Now that I'm describing the two solutions, they don't sound so bad, but unfortunately I've got to get this feature out soon and I've already spent too much time on it. 🥲 If I get a chance to rework it using the recommended flow, I will.

robust dune May 4, 2022, 8:44 PM

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I've got to get this feature out soon and I've already spent too much time on it.

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Amen to that 😄

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So here's where I've gotten to:

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I create an empty setupIntent.

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I then use that setupIntents secret to render a form (along with some other fields I need)

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When the Submit button is clicked I will:

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Create a new customer

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Create a new subscription and link it with the new customer. Important: payment_behavior: "default_incomplete" for that subscription

wraith river May 4, 2022, 8:47 PM

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doesn't make sense to use default_incomplete since you already collected card details anyways and you lose all benefit from it

robust dune May 4, 2022, 8:48 PM

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I call confirmSetup and then I pass the subscriptionId and the customerId as parameters to the redirect page

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On the page I've redirected to..I use those params, along with the setupIntent to look up the payment method that resulted from the card gathering and then I use:

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        customer: customerId
      });

      await stripe.subscriptions.update(subscriptionId, {
        default_payment_method: paymentMethodId
      });

wraith river May 4, 2022, 8:49 PM

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why do you have a Subscription and customer before the SetupIntent is even confirmed?

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Like if you're similar to @lethal willow you want to avoid the empty customer, I can get that. But you don't seem to do that 😅

robust dune May 4, 2022, 8:51 PM

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@wraith river I am in a similar boat to @lethal willow.

robust dune May 4, 2022, 8:52 PM

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wraith river doesn't make sense to use `default_incomplete` since you already collected card ...

Without that parameter I get an error like StripeInvalidRequestError: This customer has no attached payment source or default payment method. when I try to create the subscription

lethal willow May 4, 2022, 8:53 PM

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@robust dune maybe you need to update the customer again to set that PM as their default? https://stripe.com/docs/api/customers/update#update_customer-invoice_settings-default_payment_method

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I haven't gotten as far as you yet but I imagine I'll run into the same error in a moment. Curious if the setting the default PM would solve your problem.

robust dune May 4, 2022, 8:54 PM

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Yes - I'm trying that now!

wraith river May 4, 2022, 8:55 PM

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After attaching the PM you can make it the default yes. Or pass default_payment_method on subscription creation

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there's no reason to have the subscription created before. Not unless you use the Subscription's SetupIntent?

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Sorry you both are doing things differently and talking to each other so it's hard to help

lethal willow May 4, 2022, 8:56 PM

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Sorry! I will step out of the conversation and start a new thread if I get stuck. Good luck @robust dune 🙂

wraith river May 4, 2022, 8:57 PM

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No need for a new thread if you do the same thing

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but maybe wait for each step to be resolved

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So really you are both doing way too many calls/steps and I don't get why exactly

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let me know if one of you has a specific question

lethal willow May 4, 2022, 9:04 PM

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I'm doing the following calls

Create SetupIntent (to get the secret so I can have my PaymentElement load)
Confirm SetupIntent (to have it update with the PaymentMethod id)
Create Customer
Update corresponding PaymentMethod with customer_id
Create Subscription (in progress, haven't been able to test to see if I'll run into any errors).

@wraith river Assuming we're not doing the recommended flow and creating the customer ahead of the intent+subscription, how would you trim down the number of calls here?

wraith river May 4, 2022, 9:05 PM

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That is the lowest number of calls you can do in that flow unfortunately

lethal willow May 4, 2022, 9:09 PM

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Gotcha. I think the primary reason I chose not to create the Customer first and do that fetch to see if a customer with the given email address already exists is because I'm using an older version of the Stripe PHP Client and it doesn't support the search method (https://stripe.com/docs/api/customers/search) so I chose not to do that. Upon reflecting here, I could have tried to get around that by using curl from my PHP app (or upgraded the client).

robust dune May 4, 2022, 9:14 PM

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@lethal willow - your approach may have an advantage in that by the time you're creating your subscription, you've already got the payment method id.

wraith river May 4, 2022, 9:15 PM

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you could simply use https://stripe.com/docs/api/customers/list with the email parameter too, you don't need search

lethal willow May 4, 2022, 9:16 PM

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There it is, right there in the parameters. 🤦 Thanks @wraith river

robust dune May 4, 2022, 9:16 PM

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My current issue is that I've created my custom and subscription before i've collected the payment info and so I have everything that I want EXCEPT that I'm not sure how to then actually change the status of the subscription to "active" from "incomplete"

wraith river May 4, 2022, 9:17 PM

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@robust dune yeah that's the problem, your flow is really different from @lethal willow

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there's no reason to create a SetupIntent if you already have created a Subscription

wraith river May 4, 2022, 9:51 PM

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@lethal willow @robust dune are you making progress? Do you still need help?

lethal willow May 4, 2022, 9:55 PM

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I got stuck with some silly React problem so I'm just now at the point of creating the subscription. I have confidence it will work, but I'll ping here to confirm.

wraith river May 4, 2022, 9:55 PM

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sounds good

lethal willow May 4, 2022, 10:28 PM

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All set here! It worked. I have some other Stripe tasks still to finish, but at a good stage here. Thanks everyone so much for all of your help. 🎉

#picklepaws - setup for customer