Custom payment flow based on PayPal Express Checkout ​

In this chapter you will learn how to integrate a payment flow with Shopware Frontends. There are various ways in which payment providers integrate with Shopware's API, so it is likely that you need to consult the documentation of your payment provider to get the details.

This specific guides shows how to integrate the PayPal Express Checkout. However, the general flow is the same for all payment providers, so you will be able to use this guide as a reference for different providers.

Specifically, you will learn how to

• Prepare the Shopware instance for taking PayPal payments
• Embed payment buttons in your frontend
• React on PayPal events to prepare and capture the payment

Install the payment extension ​

Payment integrations require communication with the backend for various scenarios

• Create a PayPal order
• Inform PayPal which payment was selected
• Capture the user payment after approval from the provider
• Update the order status
• Notify customers on successful/failed payment
• Other actions that need additional credentials which should stay hidden (i.e. secret authorization tokens)

That's why the backend as a Payment middleware is a good option to store additional information, credentials, react on events and so on.

The SwagPayPal extension is available on Shopware Cloud stores and also can be installed manually in self-managed instances. It provides useful endpoints to conduct payments with PayPal. We will be using two PayPal-specific endpoints in this guide:

Create order ​

/store-api/paypal/express/create-order

• Creates an order directly with PayPal which contains information about the cart and the user
• Returns a payment intent token that identifies the order in PayPal

Prepare checkout ​

/store-api/paypal/express/prepare-checkout

• Used after PayPal approved the payment process request
• Registers a customer based on PayPal account's data (name, address, email) and logs them in
• The API Client receives a new context token that points to the logged-in customer

Embed Express Payment buttons ​

The next step is to embed the PayPal Express Checkout buttons in your frontend using the PayPal Javascript SDK. The SDK can be loaded from the PayPal CDN or using an npm package (PayPal SDK Documentation). In our example we're going to use the second option.

Load the PayPal SDK ​

In a Vue component we can use the loadScript method from the @paypal/paypal-js npm package:

import { loadScript } from "@paypal/paypal-js";

loadScript({
  // client id is generated in the PayPal account's apps section
  "client-id":
    "AUAcLFoadrmy9JiW2cHgriy1mTy0MCqQOP_1SSeQEUArz_zPeF1VcNY2CCxcFBQpf_N4g1k5wFVNJ1Bk",
  currency: "EUR", // or use some reference to the current currency
  locale: "en_US", // as same as in the field above
});

Now, the paypal object will be available in the global window object.

Register the buttons ​

In order to display a PayPal Button component, we need to mount it in the DOM.

// client only
window
  .paypal?
  .Buttons({/** configuration skipped */})
  .mount("#paypal-buttons-container")
// this script will mount the component in element with id="paypal-buttons-container"

React on PayPal events ​

Now, that the buttons are properly displayed, we need to react to two basic events.

• createOrder
• onApprove

There are additional events like onInit, onCancel or onError (and more) to be used on specific cases, which we are not going to cover in this guide.

createOrder event ​

In the creatOrder callback, you need to prepare the PayPal order and return a token that identifies the order in PayPal. This token will be used later on to capture the payment. It is called when the user clicks on the PayPal express checkout button.

// client only
window
  .paypal?
  .Buttons({
      createOrder: async (
        data: CreateOrderData,
        actions: CreateOrderActions
      ) => {
        await setPaymentMethod(paypalMethod.value);

        await addToCart();

        const response = await apiInstance.invoke.post<{ token: string }>(
          "/store-api/paypal/express/create-order"
        );
        return response?.data?.token;
      },
  })
  .mount("#paypal-buttons-container")

The approach here is to set the payment method internally, then add a current product to the cart, and then prepare a PayPal token to be used later on.

In the example above we do a couple of things:

1. Set the payment method for the current context
2. Add a product to the cart
3. Create a PayPal order and return the token

onApprove event ​

This event is called when the user approves the payment process. It's the last step before the payment is captured.

  ...
  // part of window.paypal.Buttons({}) params
  onApprove: async (data: OnApproveData, actions: OnApproveActions) => {
    await apiInstance.invoke.post(
      "/store-api/paypal/express/prepare-checkout",
      {
        token: data.orderID,
      }
    );
    // createOrder from useCheckout composable
    orderCreated.value = await createOrder();
    refreshCart()
    // apiInstance from useShopwareContext composable
    const handlePaymentResponse = await apiInstance.invoke.post(
      "/store-api/handle-payment",
      {
        orderId: orderCreated.value.id,
        successUrl: `${window.location.origin}/order/success?order=${orderCreated.value.id}&success=true`,
        errorUrl: `${window.location.origin}/order/success?order=${orderCreated.value.id}&success=false`,
      }
    );
    redirectPaymentUrl.value = handlePaymentResponse?.data?.redirectUrl;
    //
  },
  ...

The example above shows the code that is executed after a payer approves the PayPal popup. This function calls the prepare-checkout endpoint to register the upcoming PayPal transaction.

Thanks to the internal logic of the PayPal extension, the is already connected with the logged in customer. Now you can call createOrder() which creates an order through the Store-API. Once the order is created, its id can be used to invoke the handle-payment action to process payment. This action captures the money or redirects the user to an external payment gateway.

Working example ​

The example shows the specific case, when a product can be bought in one action from the frontend.