I need to add payments to a website I'm working on and I'm not sure what to do. On the website, users will be able to purchase virtual points. So once they pay, their account will be credited with x number of points.
I came across this tutorial on IPN http://phprocks.letsnurture.com/paypal-ipn-with-php/ which I used, and was able to do a few tests using the PayPal IPN simulator(https://developer.paypal.com/developer/ipnSimulator). Everything went well and the user's data was saved to the database after the "payment".
However someone suggested another way to handle payments. Using this http://blog.scrobbld.com/paypal/protecting-your-payments-with-ewp/ tutorial which encrypts the payment.
In the second tutorial the author mentions this: "If they use Firefox, and have installed Firebug, it is more than easy to edit the DOM of the page, and post that off to PayPal instead. So instead of having the amount at 12.99 , I might set it to:"
<input type="hidden" name="amount" value="0.99">
but doesn't this if
from the first tutorial take care of this aspect? Or does the encryption from the second tutorial offer more security for the payment?
// 3. Make sure the amount(s) paid match
if ($_POST['mc_gross'] != '0.34')
{
$errmsg .= "'mc_gross' does not match: ";
$errmsg .= $_POST['mc_gross']."
";
}
So if I understand this right, I can use the ipn listener class from the first tutorial, together with the encrypted payment from the second tutorial?