topic Re: Itemized order info with AIM in Integration and Testing

Itemized order info with AIM

txm1004 — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 23:18:13 GMT

Hi all,

We're having a problem with the itemized order info using the AIM method. On page 22 of the AIM developer guide is a snippet of sample code - we have copied this snippet into our test page and it always results in an error (code 270: Line item is invalid).

The code is:

x_line_item=item1<|>golf balls<|><|>2<|>18.95<|>Y&x_line_item=item2<|>golf bag<|>Wilson golf carry bag, red<|>1<|>39.99<|>Y&
x_line_item=item3<|>book<|>Golf for Dummies<|>1<|>21.99<|>Y&

I contacted Auth.net and told them their sample code results in an error but their customer service rep disagreed...hmmm, ok.

If we change the code to pass a single item only it works fine. Does anyone know how to fix this sample code? I've tried just about all I can think of and am close to pulling out my hair!

Thanks,

Tom

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

soundcommerce — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:29:48 GMT

Greetings,

Just submitted a sample test using the line item data provided, and was able to process a successful transaction.

========= GENERAL INFORMATION =========

Merchant : Developer Test Account
Date/Time : 13-Apr-2010 06:26:14 PM
Transaction ID : 2152734320

========= ORDER INFORMATION =========
Invoice Number :
Description : test
Total : US $1.00
Payment Method : Visa

Item : item1
Description : golf balls
Quantity : 2
Unit Price : US $18.95

Item : item2
Description : golf bag
Wilson golf carry bag, red
Quantity : 1
Unit Price : US $39.99

Item : item3
Description : book
Golf for Dummies
Quantity : 1
Unit Price : US $21.99

==== BILLING INFORMATION ===
Customer ID :
First Name : Hasan
Last Name : Robinson
Company : Sound Commerce
Address : 128 W13th St. Suite 916
City : Kansas city
State/Province : MO
Zip/Postal Code : 64105
Country : USA
Phone : 8164218891
Fax :
Email : hasan@soundcommerce.com

==== SHIPPING INFORMATION ===
First Name : Hasan
Last Name : Robinson
Company : Sound Commerce
Address : 128 W13th St. Suite 916
City : Kansas city
State/Province : MO
Zip/Postal Code : 64105
Country : USA

Are you urlencoding the parameters? Please provide a snippet of how you're passing the data to Authorize.Net.

Thank You!

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

txm1004 — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:49:17 GMT

I've hardcoded it this way for testing and it always results in this error 270:

x_line_item="item1<|>golf balls<|><|>2<|>18.95<|>Y&x_line_item=item2<|>golf bag<|>Wilson golf carry bag, red<|>1<|>39.99<|>Y&x_line_item=item3<|>book<|>Golf for Dummies<|>1<|>21.99<|>Y&"

post_values.Add "x_line_item", x_line_item

When I pass a single item like this one below it works just fine.

x_line_item = "item1<|>golf balls<|><|>2<|>18.95<|>Y"

Is there some typo I am not seeing?

Thank you!

Tom

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

airoff — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 07:49:52 GMT

I'm having the same problem.

If I use an HTML form with multiple hidden fields with name="x_line_item" it will take the additional items.

However using the sample vb.net code for AIM, or creating a post with the same data, they get rejected.

Can anyone make this work??

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

txm1004 — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:05:45 GMT

I'm glad that I'm not the only one having problems with Authorize.net's sample code...I thought I was going crazy. :smileysad:

The itemized order feature works fine for us when using SIM...or when using just 1 single item with AIM. But the sample code does not work for multiple items and AIM.

Does anyone have a suggestion? Or may someone from Authorize.net could chime in....

Thanks!

Tom

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

txm1004 — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 21:17:13 GMT

I was just chatting with Auth.net's customer support (thanks, Emily - you were really trying to help!)...

We tried several things:

- it seems that there is an extra bracketed pipe in the sample code for item1 right after the string 'golf balls'...the other line items do not have this. I get the same error = 270 though when I remove the bracketed pipe from item1
- there's a comma in the text field in item2...we tried removing that but it results in the same error = 270

I believe there's a bug in this feature and asked for escalation of this issue for a development review...I hope I will hear from auth.net soon. If/when I do I will update this post.

Does anyone have any other suggestions or possible solutions? I can't image that we're the first to run into this problem...

Thanks,

Tom

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

Trevor — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 21:35:31 GMT

I'm attaching an updated copy of our AIM PHP sample code with a new section showing how to add line item details. The most common error when adding line item details to our sample code is to simply add multiple x_line_item fields to the array. Because the sample code uses associative arrays, this will usually cause a duplicate key error or all but one of the items will simply be discarded.

In the above example, the most likely problem is actually the url_encode process itself. I see that you avoided the error of duplicate keys by adding the whole url string with only one , unfortunately this presents a whole new error by urlencoding the ampersands in the string. This results in them no longer being recognized as special characters dividing the multiple x_line_item values.

Please take a look at this new sample code and let me know if you have any questions. I can provide the equivalent code for any of our AIM samples if needed. If you do find this helpful, I will consider officially adding similar code to each of our available AIM sample code downloads.

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

txm1004 — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 19:17:52 GMT

Hi Trevor,

Thank you for the explanation...very helpful!

Yes, if possible I'd like to see a sample code for the line items details for ASP.

Can you post this here or update the sample code library?

Thanks,

Tom

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

Trevor — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:30:46 GMT

Since you just said ASP, I'm going to assume that you are referring to ASP classic. I've attached an updated version of the ASP classic code that adds in the line items.

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

txm1004 — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 23:06:40 GMT

Hi Trevor,

Fantastic! This works like a charm now! Thank you!

One more question though...I noticed you placed the line item code after the post_string has already been completely encoded. We're then looping over our shopping cart line items and add the line items with this code:

item = Count & "<|>" & RS("ItemCode") & "<|>" & RS("ItemName") & "<|>" & RS("ItemQuantity") & "<|>" & RS("ItemDiscountedPrice") & "<|>N"
	
post_string = post_string & "&x_line_item=" & Server.URLEncode(item)

We would also like to pass the line item info to the merchant receipt using this code:

merchant_field = "Item " & Count
merchant_field_value = RS("ItemCode") & " - " & RS("ItemName") & "  " & FormatCurrency(RS("ItemDiscountedPrice"))

post_values.Add merchant_field, merchant_field_value

Since the post_string has already been encoded I assume that we can't add these merchant_fields during the same loop and should add them prior to the encoding of the post_string, correct? Just want to make sure we're not doing an unnecessary loop over the shopping cart...

Again, thank you for your help!

Tom

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

Trevor — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 22:24:33 GMT

Hi Tom,

I'm not entirely sure that I understand your question. Just to be clear, the post string itself is never truly encoded, just each of the values that is added on to it. You can add more values at any time prior to the obj.request being sent using a function simililar to:

post_string = post_string & "&<VARIABLE_NAME>=" & Server.URLEncode(<VALUE>)

In fact, this is exatly what is being done with the line item code that I just added.

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

tmahaffey — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 17:55:32 GMT

Any chance there's a Perl example of this?

Thanks!

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

Trevor — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 21:52:25 GMT

Actually, the feedback in this thread encouraged me to update the rest of the samples. Since late July, all of the AIM sample code available from this site has included an example of how to submit line item details. The new section is commented out by default and is found just a few lines after the other variables are declared in all of the samples.

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

tmahaffey — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 22:04:18 GMT

Thank you. I tried that and can get 1 item to work, comment it out and the 2nd one works, but when I build out my string in Perl it won't accept it.

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

Trevor — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 22:41:27 GMT

The logic for submitting the line items in perl is very different then what is described earlier in this thread for PHP, and actually much simpler. The same basic problem is there, you can't add a multiple key/value pairs for x_line_item without them conflicting. Luckily, this was accounted for in perl and you can pass multiple values for an indvidual key and the LWP::UserAgent class will automatically separate it into multiple key/value pairs when it creates the post string.

Within the sample, three line items are passed using the following format within $post_values:

"x_line_item" => ["item1<|>golf balls<|><|>2<|>18.95<|>Y",

"item2<|>golf bag<|>Wilson golf carry bag, red<|>1<|>39.99<|>Y",

"item3<|>book<|>Golf for Dummies<|>1<|>21.99<|>Y"]

This a list of 3 separate line item values in one key, it is only spread across 3 lines for readability, you will encounter formatting errors if you uncomment only one line or another. Also don't forget to add a comma after the previous name/value pair (x_zip in the sample). You should be able to add or remove items to that x_line_item list without any errors.

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

tmahaffey — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 13:04:32 GMT

I was able to get the sample to work first try earlier this week (thanks for the samples!). :manhappy:

My issue seems to when I pass my shopping cart values into a Perl string and try to have it passed to $post_values. Here is the code:

and then I'm trying to pass that to x_line_item this way, "x_line_item" => [$cust_items]

It works great with 1 item, but fails with the 2nd. I have been able to print $cust_items to see tha values and it comes back as "30-02<|>2012 Fire Combo T-Shirt<|>Medium<|>1<|>14.95<|>Y","30-01<|>2012 Party T-Shirt<|>Extra Large<|>1<|>14.95<|>Y" I can copy/paste that string to "x_line_item" it that works, but when I try to pass my sting $cust_items I get "Line item 1 is invalid."

Am I not able to place the string into "x_line_item"?

Thank you

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

soundcommerce — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 13:40:05 GMT

Good Morning All!

The general syntax and structure of your line item data does follow Authorize.Net's standards. Your example indicates the passing of all shopping cart items to a single line item variable (x_line_item).

You must instead pass each individual cart item (line item) to the corresponding x_line_item variable.

GOOD EXAMPLE:

x_line_item="30-02<|>2012 Fire Combo T-Shirt<|>Medium<|>1<|>14.95<|>Y"

x_line_item="30-01<|>2012 Party T-Shirt<|>Extra Large<|>1<|>14.95<|>Y"

BAD EXAMPLE:

x_line_item="30-02<|>2012 Fire Combo T-Shirt<|>Medium<|>1<|>14.95<|>Y,30-01<|>2012 Party T-Shirt<|>Extra Large<|>1<|>14.95<|>Y"

YOUR COMMENT:

It works great with 1 item, but fails with the 2nd.

OUR COMMENT:

Authorize.Net will pick-up the first line item based on the "Bad Example" code (provided by you), but will drop the second line item because it doesn't have a corresponding "x_line_item" parameter to match it to.

SOLUTION:

Pass each shopping cart item to the x_line_item variable individually, or come up with a secondary function to split the items before passing it to the line item variable.

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

AndrewBucklin — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 20:02:41 GMT

How do I get the itemized order information to show up in the Merchant EMail Receipt?

EDIT: Nevermind; found out I could also add merchant definited fields, so I added the information there as well.

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

kinziegreeen — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 18:05:49 GMT

Why will this not work with variables? I get a 500 error. It works fine if I just enter $ amounts. Thanks. chris

$dues = "$_POST['dues']";
$fund = "$_POST['fund']";
$award = "$_POST['award']";

$line_items = array(
"item1<|>Dues<|><|>1<|>$dues<|>Y",
"item2<|>Fund<|><|>1<|>$fund<|>Y",
"item3<|>Award<|><|>1<|>$award<|>Y");

foreach( $line_items as $value )
{ $data .= "&x_line_item=" . urlencode( $value ); }

Re: Itemized order info with AIM

Trevor — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 23:19:58 GMT

I just tested this out swapping in variables instead of static values and didn't receive any kind of error. However, I do get an error if I try and capture POST values with the code that you are using. I would remove the extra quotation marks in $dues = "$_POST['dues']";

Try usingt his format:

$dues = $_POST['dues'];