Handling Authorize.Net Silent Post with PHP

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39

< ?php
// Get the subscription ID if it is available. 
// Otherwise $subscription_id will be set to zero.
$subscription_id = (int) $_POST['x_subscription_id'];
 
// Check to see if we got a valid subscription ID.
// If so, do something with it.
if ($subscription_id)
{
    // Get the response code. 1 is success, 2 is decline, 3 is error
    $response_code = (int) $_POST['x_response_code'];
 
    // Get the reason code. 8 is expired card.
    $reason_code = (int) $_POST['x_response_reason_code'];
 
    if ($response_code == 1)
    {
        // Approved!
 
        // Some useful fields might include:
        // $authorization_code = $_POST['x_auth_code'];
        // $avs_verify_result  = $_POST['x_avs_code'];
        // $transaction_id     = $_POST['x_trans_id'];
        // $customer_id        = $_POST['x_cust_id'];
    }
    else if ($response_code == 2)
    {
        // Declined
    }
    else if ($response_code == 3 && $reason_code == 8)
    {
        // An expired card
    }
    else 
    {
        // Other error
    }
}
?>

9 Responses to “Handling Authorize.Net Silent Post with PHP”

1. Greeshma Says:
   January 20th, 2010 at 12:35 am

   Very good blog! Keep it up. I’m newbie in the software field. And I’m learning new improvements in the software field. Now we have decided to use Authorize.net’s ARB for a new project. And I’m very happy reading this blog. It gave me most of the information that I need for integrating Authorize.net’s ARB service in our new website project. But still I’m in a confusion. I tried creating an ARB subscription. And I know I can process further transactions on that subscription using the subscriptionid which I can store in db in a field corresponding to a customer record. And I’m aware of the silent post feature. But ,as I’m using a test account, I don’t have silent post feature enabled. Anyway I’m planning to have an actual account. But I’m very much confused of where to provide an interface in website, where the customer can come and pay their next subscriptions. Please give me suggestions. I’ll be very thankful to you. And I’m sure you can provide me this information.

   Thanks in advance,
   Greeshma

2. Brian Says:
   February 4th, 2010 at 5:38 pm

   Great post, your ‘All About Authorize.Net’s Silent Post’ really helped me out too. I have one question though. In your sample code above you list $response_code == 3 && $reason_code == 8 as an expired card. I’m a little confused because I read in your other post that expired cards don’t get handled by the silent post at all.

   “However, if a credit card on file within an ARB subscription has expired a transaction will not process thus you will not receive a Silent Post response, as you only receive Silent Post responses to transactions that process through your account. In order to be notified about expired credit cards, you can enable the ARB email notifications from within the account control panel. ”

   I’m about to write some code to suspend a user’s account if their payment is no good, and I’m wondering if I can do it all through the silent post, or if I need to store the exp-date and make my own scheduled task to parse through them and suspend accounts with expired accounts.

   Any help would be greatly appreciated.

   Thanks,
   Brian

3. Johnny Says:
   February 4th, 2010 at 5:43 pm

   If a credit card is expired when ARB goes to process it it won’t be run at all. ARB knows the card is expired and simply aborts the transaction since the card is obviously no good anymore. However, a credit card may be in the ARB system with an incorrect expiration date, in which case those cards will be processed and will come back as declined.

   So in your case you will want to make a note of a user’s expiration date so you can notify them it is time to update their credit card before it actually does expire and then automatically suspend their account when it is past the expiration date. That will handle the vast majority of your expired card issues. Silent post will only catch the odd ones that have incorrect expiration dates.

4. Brian Says:
   February 4th, 2010 at 8:15 pm

   Thanks so much for the clarification. That really helps. I’ve got it setup now just like you described. Thanks for the speedy response.

5. Authorize.net newbie Says:
   August 3rd, 2010 at 4:41 pm

   Hi John,

   Thanks for the wonderful posts on authorize.net.
   My question : Is there a way I can authenticate Authorize.net on my silent POST page. Is there a way I can know that the being made to my page is really coming from authorize.net and that its not a hack or a bogus call?

   All help is very much appreciated and Thanks for the help in advance!

6. Johnny Says:
   August 3rd, 2010 at 4:59 pm

   You can calculate the MD5 yourself and make sure it matches what is presented to you in Silent Post. The SIM sample code will show you how that is done.

7. Authorize.net newbie Says:
   August 3rd, 2010 at 7:34 pm

   Huge Thanks!

8. Tarek Says:
   August 18th, 2010 at 8:04 pm

   My only question is: when defining the Silent Post URL in my merchant account it should have the script name that will be parsing the response whether it’s PHP,ASP,JSP or. NET so the url should be http://domain.com/arb/processARB.php?

   Is this correct?

9. Johnny Says:
   August 18th, 2010 at 8:57 pm

   Yes.

Leave a Reply