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How do I add subcriptions to a page.

mcollismcollis Member
in Help edited June 2008
I have incorporated lightCMS to my website design business and I would like people to be able to signup for the service through my website. This way I can have recurring charges.

Would I do this using subscriptions?

If so how would I do this?

Or where do I get the documentation to learn how to do this?

Thanks in advance.
Comments
  • brettbrett FoxyCart Team
    So you want to use FoxyCart to manage LightCMS users? If the customer pays for a subscription, then give them access to your LightCMS site?

    I think this question might actually be more appropriate at their forums. I'm not sure whether they offer an API to modify users, which would be key for pulling this off.

    Or, you could always do it manually. You get a subscription, you create the user in Light, and you're done. If a subscription expires, you remove the user from Light. That'd be the easiest to get going.

    Is that what you're after?
  • mcollismcollis Member
    Basically I want a way for user to sign up for the service though my website and have a monthly recurring charge applied to their credit card. This way I don't have to hunt them down every time its time to pay. I would also like the user to receive a receipt for the service every month.
  • lukeluke FoxyCart Team
    That's exactly what we do with FoxyCart. We eat our own dogfood, as they say. When someone signs up up for a subscription, we process the datafeed and set the store to active automatically.

    Here are the details for adding subscriptions to your cart:
    http://wiki.foxycart.com/getting_started:adding_links_and_forms#subscription_attributes

    You'll then want to setup a page on your system that will process the datafeed for you. The datafeed is encrypted XML data that will be POSTed to the page of your choice and encrypted with the string of your choice.
    http://wiki.foxycart.com/docs:datafeed

    ...and process it automatically to manage your users. See this page for some example integrations:
    http://wiki.foxycart.com/integration?datasrt=&dataflt=tags:datafeed

    The basic concept behind FoxyCart is that we don't duplicate your data. We give you full access to it so you have the flexibilty to integrate with just about any system out there.

    If you do get things up and running, please let us know. I'm sure the rest of the lightCMS community would be interested in this integration as well.
  • brettbrett FoxyCart Team
    Just to clarify, I don't think you can actually do much with the XML datafeed on LightCMS. I could be wrong, but in my Light adventures I haven't seen functionality to do any "real" programming or access the database. I could be wrong though. I'd love to see if it's possible.

    But even without the XML datafeed processing you could still have subscriptions just fine. You just wouldn't be able to automate anything based on subscriptions, which might not be an issue.
  • bret_ortonbret_orton Member
    I've looked over many subscription threads and just want to clarify (why I picked this thread to bump is random):

    I've read that there's currently no datafeed postback on a failed transaction on a recurring subscription. As it's not a website subscription, I can handle that via a cron task checking "next recur date". However, I can't find any documentation that states on each successful recurring transaction, there's an XML datafeed postback that would trigger our local system to increase that "next recur date".

    So... in regard to subscriptions, does Foxycart automatically send an XML datafeed on successful recurring transactions I can use to continually increase the "next recur date" ?

    Apologies if I missed this in the wiki and docs that mention this, and I'll say it again - you'all are savage at your product and support. It's much appreciated.

    - bret
  • brettbrett FoxyCart Team
    The "transaction" XML datafeed is sent on every transaction, including subscriptions. Subscriptions come through with a "next transaction date" in the XML for you to modify your end.

    That said, we're currently working on a much, much improved subscription model, possibly with an API (though that may come later). If you'd like details we can discuss (in a new thread I think would make the most sense), but it will include the ability to modify subscriptions, add tax and shipping to subs, allow the customer to self-cancel, and provide error notification so you don't have to cron things (though to some degree that might still be useful).

    Give the XML page on the wiki a look and you can see what to expect, and also check out the test scripts here:
    http://wiki.foxycart.com/integration
    The 2 test_xml scripts are _extremely_ useful when working with the XML datafeeds.
  • bret_ortonbret_orton Member
    Savage.... that's all i needed to confirm.

    Thanks Brett.
    - b
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