Google Checkout API

How to check Google Checkout API has reached your callback page

2008-07-31T23:20:00.004+01:00

In this post I will tell you how to find out if Google has actually reached your callback page, when using the Google Checkout Api.

There are several ways to check that Google is actually getting to your page.

1. Go into the Tools tab, then click on the integration console.

This will tell you if there are any errors that Google encountered trying to get to or run your page.

2. The next best way is to create a test event on your callback page that will fire when ever the page is run. This can be as simple as just writing a line to a text file, in fact using a text write is a good idea as you can write out all responses from Google and make sure are know which information is coming back, and whether it is correct or not.

A sample for this would be as follows

If you write the following into your callback page, a text will be written to a text file, if there is nothing written, Google has not run this page.

Sample 1 - Writing a simple line to a text file

Writes test line to TestFile.txt - TestFile.txt must exist in the same location on your server as you callback page, simple write the code below at the top of your callback page. If nothing is written Google has not reached your page, check the integration console as advised above.

'START OF CODE'

Dim fso, f, FilePath
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
FilePath = Server.MapPath(".") & "\TestFile.txt"
Set f = fso2.CreateTextFile(FilePath, True)
f.WriteLine "Testing"
f.close

'END OF CODE'

Sample 2 - Writing Full Google XML response to text file

The following code will write the Google response to a text file called CompleteGoogleResponse.txt, which must exist in the same location as your callback page.

With this code you have two options, you can write it just below the LogMessage ResponseXML line in the sample callback.asp code provided by Google, just remove the last PrivateData and GNum lines.

or you can write it as is into the function called ProcessNewOrderNotification just write the code at the top of this function, and if all is well you will have a file with the full response XML from Google as well as your Google Order Number for this transaction and any private data your may have sent (NOTE remove the private data line if you do not send any in your original transaction), again if nothing is written Google failed to reach your page, check the integration console as advised above.

'START OF CODE'

Dim fso1, f1, FilePath1
Set fso1 = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
FilePath1 = Server.MapPath(".") & "\CompleteGoogleResponse.txt"
Set f1 = fso2.CreateTextFile(FilePath1, True)
f1.WriteLine "GoogleResponse=" & ResponseXml
f1.WriteLine "PrivateData=" & MyPrivateData.xml
f1.WriteLine "GNum=" & GoogleOrderNumber
f1.close

'END OF CODE'

NOTE

It must be said that if the above code is written into your callback page, and the text written to your file is something like GNum= but there is no information after the = sign, then Google has successfully hit your page, but failed to send you any information. Check the integration console as advised above.

I hope this makes sense, if you have any questions or want me to expand on any of this just drop me a comment or send me an email.

Thanks
Sean J Connolly
Visit AJAX Web Development Store

DMS - Document Management, Webmail
BuzzProperties.co.uk - Online Property Sales and Letting

Google Search API Results

2008-05-22T14:33:00.002+01:00

You may be custom to using the Google APIs for adding to your website or web application. I thought I would write a bit about why the results are not the same as the live Google system.

The 2 main API's that are used by developers from the Google network are the Map API and the search API, although there are other APIs in the Google arsenal, the Google Map API and Google Search API are 2 that return data.

The main question that I get asked is "Why do I get different results from using the API than that I do from using Google?".

The answer is mainly a two fold problem.

1. The issue with the API that relies on third party data, such as the Google Maps API, as most of the data Google uses for this API is not actually owned by Google. This is particularly true when it comes to the geo-coding, that is taken specific address information and turning into actual latitude and longitude on the planet for the Google Map to find. The main issue with this is that Google relies on purchased data to achieve this tasks, and in each country this is normally the postal services in that country.

This mean s that there are restrictions on what Google can do with this data, this is the main reason why when using the Google Map API you get different results than the actual Google Maps website, the Google Maps website data is different from the Google Maps API, just because of the restrictions placed on Google by licensees / owners of the data.

I know Google is working to improve the relationships and use of the data, so lets hope they can open up the world and the data in it.

2. The next issue other than licensing of the data is where the data comes from, this mainly fits with the Google Search API, as the Google search network is main up of different data centres, all of which have slightly different data. So you may get different results due to a different data centre being used, and as google route to data is different from a search on the Google website to using the Google Search API then the results can often be different.

It must also be pointed out that as a rtegisterd Google user Google remembers what you search for and improves your results, so when you use the Google website to search your results will be improved for a better match to what your looking for. However when you use the Google Search API this is not true, as the API returns raw data.

So I think that although we can use the Google APIs to build a mini Google world, it will never be the same as Google. Which makes sense after all the great guys and gals at Google allows us to use most things for FREE, so keep this in mind when coding. Look at what you are trying to do and ask yourself what you really want to do.

Thanks
Sean J Connolly
Visit AJAX Web Development Store

NotJustAJAX - Techy Blog
DMS - Document Management, Webmail
BuzzProperties.co.uk - Online Property Sales and Letting

Robots.txt, SiteMaps - what are they and how do I use them?

2008-05-10T14:35:00.006+01:00

I thought I would touch on what exactly a website map or sitemap is and how to make one and what to do with it. I will also talk about the robots.txt

Robots.txt

What is this?

The robots.txt file is a file you place on your website to tell the web spiders where they can and cannot go on your website.

One word of caution is that although the good web spiders will keep out of your website according to this file, others will not. So if you have content you really don't want to be seen, either move it, password protect it or whatever.

What does it look like?

The robots.txt file is simple a text file called robots.txt.

The main two parts to your robots.txt file are

User-agent - this tells a specific spider what to do i.e Googlebot
Disallow - this specifies which section of your site is restricted
Allow - this specifies which section of your website is not restricted

The basic structure is

User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow:

User-agent:*

Disallow:/

This example simply says that only Google can visit your website, and all other spiders are not allowed to visit. To restrict specific folders or files just do:

Disallow:/afoldername (this restricts access to http://www.yoursite.com/afoldername)

Disallow:/getoff.htm (this restricts access to http://www.yoursite.com/getoff.htm)

So an example which says that you want everything except your images folder spidered looks like:

User-agent:*

Disallow:/images

This means everything except your images folder will be spidered.

Why use it?

The purpose behind the robots.txt file is to give a route into your website, and if you have a large website you should restrict as much as possible, as the spiders will only spend so much time on your website. So the best thing to do is hide content they cannot see anyway, such as images.

Where to put it.

One your have created a robots.txt file, simply uploaded it to the root directory of your website, that is the http://www.yourwebsite.com location on your server, and you should be able to view it on your website as http://www.yourwebsite.com/robots.txt

Website Map or Sitemap

What is a website map or sitemap

The purpose of a sitemap if that it gives both the search engine spiders a useful map to follow when looking at your website, but it does the same for your users.

The search engines look at your site map and it give them an updated view of your website, which helps keep the indexing of your website up to date in the seaarch engine listings.

What does it look like

The website map or sitemap comes in 3 forms

HTML Form - this is the one for your end users

An HTML sitemap can been any form you wish that gives a nice visual overview of your website, it is normally a cut down page on your website with a simply list of links on your website.

XML Sitemap - this is an XML list of your website, containing the links on your website, this is the one you submit to the search engines.

The XML site map normally contains the following XML nodes

url
- loc - the url of the page
- lastmod - the modified date
- changefreq - how often page is updated
- priority - how important in your website is this page (0.0 - 1.0)

The url node need to be repeated for each link on your website.

Don't worry if it looks scary there are lots of good resources online to create your own XML website / sitemap.

But a simple search will help you find lots of great sitemap creators, so you don't need to be scared.

Text Based - This is a text based version of your sitemap

The text sitemap is just a simple list of your links on your website

For Example

http://www.buzzproperties.co.uk/
http://buzzproperties.co.uk/

Now I have my sitemap what do I do with it

Simply save each file with any name you like
upload the file to your website root i.e http://buzzproperties.co.uk/sitemap.xml
Register for Google Webmaster Tools at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
Login to your webmaster tools account
Add your website url into the add site box
Click on your website in the list and click on Sitemaps on the left menu
Click add a sitemap and enter the url of the sitemap on your website (your can add both the text and XMl sitemap to your listing)

Google will validate your sitemaps and if everything is OK it will let you know in the status.

Google now knows about your sitemap, and everytime you make changes just update your sitemap and upload, and resubmit it - that is unless none of the links have changed.

Thanks
Sean J Connolly
Visit AJAX Web Development Store

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DMS - Document Management, Webmail
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java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Read timed out

2008-04-22T17:18:00.004+01:00

On occassions when you are testing against the Google API you may get the following error message

java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Read timed out

The error is a simple one to correct. In short its your fault. There is an error in your coding and something has not finished processing, and in short you have probably crashed your webserver.

To Fix

Check your code
Look at your webserver logfile for the page that was causing the error
If necessary run debugging tools on your web server to find the error.
You can assign application pools to your website, this is advisable as you will only crash the pool not not the box.

Thanks
Sean J Connolly
Visit AJAX Web Development Store

DMS - Document Management, Webmail
BuzzProperties.co.uk - Online Property Sales and Letting

SandBox and SSL

2008-04-22T17:06:00.003+01:00

To answer a lot of questions people have been asking about the test environment and the live environment and the use of ssl.

When you are testing against Google Sandbox environment you do not need to use an SSL secured area to carryout your testing. All you need to do is specify a not SSL secured page, i.e http not https connection for your testing.

Whne you go live you must use an SSL secured area, although Google will communicate with a non SSL secured area it is not advisable to send your payment information over an unsecured connection.

So in closing

Sandbox - you do not need to use an SSL area or certificate when developing

Live / Production - you must use an SSL area or certifcate when deploying your application.

Thanks
Sean J Connolly
Visit AJAX Web Development Store

DMS - Document Management, Webmail
BuzzProperties.co.uk - Online Property Sales and Letting

How to process Order Response from Google Checkout

2008-04-18T17:47:00.003+01:00

In this article I am going to look at what you need to do to process the returned response from the Google Checkout API.

This article assumes you have read the first article and by the point of reading this article have managed to pass an order into Google Checkout, and got through the process to the thank you screen.

NOTE

This article also assumes that they are no errors in anything, and all API transactions Google Checkout sends baack are received and processed withut any problems.

I will address some problems you may encounter in my next article.

So how do you process the response from Google Checkout.

Prerequisite

Before we begin please make sure that you have the following be going on.

An understanding of Classic ASP and how XML works
Both a Google Checkout Account and Google Checkout Sandbox Account
A Copy of the Classic ASP Sample Code - Get a Copy Here

Your website should already be at the point where all product information is passed to Google Checkout and you can complete a transaction with any problems.

Step 1 - Check your settings

The first thing to do is to make sure that you are actually asking Google Checkout to send you some sort of response.

Make sure that the For Extra security... tick box is unchecked (if you leave this checked you will get URL errors when posting your order form to Google)
Make sue the XML option is selected for the Callback Method (this means Google will send XML to your callback page and not name/value pairs)
Enter your url of where your callback.asp page will be hosted. (when testing in sandbox this URL does not have to be SSL secured and can use the normal HTTP protocol

Step 2 - Catching the response

We are asking Google Checkout to pass us XML as a response so we need to do something with this. Again we are going to make our life a bit easier and make use of the Google Checkout code sample. We coudl how ever just parse the parent/child node from the XML and do what ever we like.

This will be covered in a later article around using .Net to send and receive sales to Google Checkout.

What do we get from Google

Google Checkout sends mainly two types of response to our callback.asp page.

the new-order-notification - the first response letting us know there is a new Google Checkout order and order number.
the order-state-change-notification - this is sent everytime the status of the order changes, such as the card being charged, etc

This is not to say these are the only notifications sent from Google, as in addition to the above there are also notifications sent for

risk-information-notification - any information Google Receives about the risk of doing this order they will pass on.
charge-amount-notification - the amount charged to the card
chargeback-amount-notifcation - the amount that is placed on the card as chargeback
refund-amount-notification - any refund amount that has been issued
authorization-amount-notification - the actual amount that was authorized for payment
merchant-calculation-callback - the calculation the merchant has asked for and the response

Now to make life a whole lot easier we are going to only implement the top 2 points of the API calls, as we are really only interested in

The fact that we have a new order and what the Google Checkout Order Number is
What is the status of the payment of this order.

The main file that we are going to use to process new orders is the callback.asp file which is provided in the sample source code from Google.

CallBack.asp

Inside this file there are two things that we want to predominantly do

Receive the first response from Google, this will contain the Google Order Number.
Receive the status of the buyers payment, such as PROCESSING, CHARGED or what ever.

Ok, so how do we do it?

Firstly inside this file there is a function called ProcessNewOrderNotification this function simply pulls in the XML response from Google and parses it out into an array called MyNewOrder.

Inside this function we simply loop through the array and pull out what we want. Again out lovely friends at Google have already done this for you.

You will see a For Next loop which passed the array elements out and puts these into a variable called MyNewOrder

We then just need to carryout some type of action to capture the information we want. So lets say we want to capture the Google Checkout order number and update our website with this information.

Here we simply take the variable MyNewOrder.GoogleOrdeNumber and a value we need at this point to identify this order on our own system, let use the unique merchant-item-id we passed in from our form and call the MyItem.MerchantItemId

All you do then is pass these values to somewhere you want to do something with them, if you simply are going to pass these to another page for processing your would do.

Create a variable with the url string containing the location of the page for processing i.e "https://yourdomain.com/processneworder.asp?GoogleOrderNumber=" & MyNewOrder.GoogleOrderNumber & "&ItemID=" & MyItem.MerchantItemId
Then simply redirect the response to your new page, jsut after the SendAck command with the current sub routine.

For Example

At around line 92 you enter the following code

Dim PostingURLString

PostingURLString = "https://yourdomain.com/processneworder.asp?GoogleOrderNumber=" & MyNewOrder.GoogleOrderNumber & "&username=" & MyItem.MerchantItemId & "&licensetype=" & left(MyItem.Name,5)

Then at around line 183 your do you redirection to your processing page

Response.Redirect(PostingURL)

You can take any of the values from the array and XMl response from Google, but in this example we are only taking the basic information we need.

The Google Order Numder for our new order
Our unique identifier to allow us to link the new order number with our order

Step 3 - the ongoing status

Up to this point we now are able to send the order to Google and we have updated our website to reflect this fact that our order send from our form, has now been received by Google Checkout and we have been given an order number.

The next thing we want to be concerned with is the ongoing status of the order and the most important thing, when have we received our money.

For this we are concerned with the ProcessOrderStateChangeNotification function, this function lets us track the payment process of the order and take the necessary action when an order is processed.

Again Google has taken care of the leg work for this case, and has passed the XML response sent from the Google Checkout API into an array, so all we really want to know is that when have we been paid, for this we call upon the MyOrderState.NewFinancialOrderState variable and simply use the code provided, and when this variable matches the payment status we want we do something.

On around line 255 of callback.asp you will see a select statement with all the possible options already taken card of, so all we need to do is simply add our custom action to the right choice.

For Example

Lets say we only care when we get paid all we do is add your action in the select statement for when the case matches CHARGED. So again we could pass this fact to a different page to process our order, and as the Google Order numbers as unique we can use the order number to pass to our website to provide a unique identifier to process this order.

This is as follows

On around line 252 we code

Dim UpdateURLString
UpdateURLString = "https://yourdomain.com/PageToUpdateOrderPaymentHistory.asp?GoogleOrderNumber=" & GoogleOrderNumber & "&GoogleStatus=" & MyOrderState.NewFinancialOrderState & "&GoogleReason=" & Reason

In this example we are passing the Google Order Number, the Payment Status and the Reason to our chosen URL.

Again we the can simply do a redirection to pass this information to our website to inform it of the new payment status.

So within the CHARGED section of the select statement your simply enter - line 273ish

Response.Redirect(UpdateURLString)

This example only passes information to our website on the new order and then when a successful payment is made, you could keep your website up to date with the payment status by simply putting the response.redirect statement within each case of the select statement. The details in the URL will change and allow you to update your order status on your website.

NOTE - the UpdateURLString must be created outside the Select Statement

This blog is aimed at giving you a basic insight into how to pass and retrieve an order using Google Checkout, there are a lot more options but using this blog you will be able to pass and create the order using Google.

Happy Coding.

Any Questions Just let me know

How to Send Order to Google Checkout (classic ASP)

2008-04-18T15:22:00.002+01:00

This guide is aimed at anyone who wishes to use the Google Checkout to process transactions from their website. This section will concentrate passsing your order into Google using an on page form.

We will make use of the provided code by the Google Team, as they have done all the leg work, so make use of it.

Prerequisite

Before we begin please make sure that you have the following be going on.

An understanding of Classic ASP and how XML works

Both a Google Checkout Account and Google Checkout Sandbox Account

A Copy of the Classic ASP Sample Code - Get a Copy Here

Your website should already be at the point where all product information is able to be passed to Google.

The Process

Step 1 - Setup your environment

Once you have downloaded the sample code, extract the complete contents of the Zip file into the location you are going to run the code from. What I would suggest is that you keep the Google code in its own folder within your website, thsi will make using it alot easier.

Step 2 - Get your Merchant ID and Key

Click on the settings tab at the top of the screen, then click on the integration option from the left menu.

Make a note of your Gooogle Merchant ID and Google Merchant Key from the right of the screen.

NOTE - Your Sandbox Merchant ID and Merchant Key are different to your Live / Production details.

Step 3 - Setup the details for your call back page.

Make sure that the For Extra security... tick box is unchecked (if you leave this checked you will get URL errors when posting your order form to Google)

Make sue the XML option is selected for the Callback Method (this means Google will send XML to your callback page and not name/value pairs)

Enter your url of where your callback.asp page will be hosted. (when testing in sandbox this URL does not have to be SSL secured and can use the normal HTTP protocol

Step 4 - Setup Testing Details

Ok once you have made a note of your merchant id and key, you need to enter these in the correct locations in order to process your orders and receive stuff back from Google.

We also need to setup the sample code to work as test code, so all transactions can be done against out test environment.

Open the file googleglobal.asp and do the following

Change the values of the two contstants MerchantId and MerchantKey. These should match your testing, sandbox details for testing.

Change the variable EnvType to SANDBOX

Change the variable MerchantCurrency to match your country currency, GBP, USD, etc.

Note - Make sure all of the files contained in the code sample Zip file are location in the same folder

Step 5 - Create your page form

Now go into the page which you wish to submit to GoogleCheckout. This page is the one which will be passed directly to Google containing the order details.

On this page you need to create a form with a series of hidden fields

The basic fields are

item_price_1 - the price of the item

item_currency_1 - the currency for this item

item_quantity_1 - the amount of this item

item_description_1 - the description of this item

item_name_1 - the name of this item

If you are passing more item you can do so by incrementing the number for example, iten_price_1, item_price_2 and so on.

In addition to the fields above you can additionally specific.

ship_method_name_1 - this is the carrier or delivery method

ship_method_price_1 - this is the cost of delivery for this item

Again for multiple items you can just increment the item number for example, ship_method_name_1, ship_method_name_2 and so on.

Now in addition to the item specific fields you can additionally specify any tax details, such as VAT or trade taxes you wish to apply to this order. Google will automatically add this on to your total for you at the checkout.

These fields are

tax_rate - this is the actual rate of tax as a decimal i.e 17.5% would be 0.175

tax_use_state - if in the US you must specify which state you are paying tax to.

continue-shopping-url - if you specify this the link the shopper clicks on the purchase complete page in the checkout will take them to this url.

Form Target URL

Whilst in testing your form needs to post to
https://sandbox.google.com/checkout/cws/v2/Merchant/YOUR-MERCHANT_ID/checkoutForm

Note - Replace YOUR-MERCHANT_ID with the merchant ID for your Sandbox account.

Form Sample

<form name="googleform" action="https://sandbox.google.com/checkout/cws/v2/Merchant/YOUR-MERCHANT-ID/checkoutForm" method="post" charset="utf-8">
<input type="hidden" value="Product_Name" name="item_name_1">
<input type="hidden" value="Product Description" name="item_description_1">
<input type="hidden" value="1" name="item_quantity_1">
<input type="hidden" value="99" name="item_price_1">
<input type="hidden" value="GBP" name="item_currency_1">
<input type="hidden" value="DHL" name="ship_method_name_1">
<input type="hidden" value="3.99" name="ship_method_price_1">
<input type="hidden" value="0.175" name="tax_rate">
<input type="hidden" value="NY" name="tax_us_state"></form>

Once you have passed all your information into this form, you can now post this form directly to Google Checkout. All you need to do is submit this form, by which ever means you like.

In my next post I will look at what to do this the details you have passed into Google.

Sean J Connolly - AJAX and GIS Specialist
http://www.potissimus.co.uk
http://www.buzzproperties.co.uk/

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