Please be gentle with me if I'm wrong here, but there appears to be incorrect information in the CIM documentation regarding payment processing.
On page 10 of the CIM_XML_guide.pdf file it (at the top of that page) it says this:
"The merchant can call Authorize.Net API method CreateProfileTransaction at any time to charge the credit card (or eCheck.Net)"
That is the last line in a description, which starts on page 9, of the steps involved in a typical CIM process.
After searching through the CIM documentation and not finding any reference to 'CreateProfileTransaction' other than the one on that line, I started to assume that the CIM system was not actually for processing payment transactions, but - as it's name implies - is ONLY for storing customer payment information (that seems to have been the wrong assumption).
If that were the case, then there must be some way to inject the customers CIM profile information into another transaction process, such as SIM or AIM.
Since SIM seemed to be the choice we would need to use, I started looking through that for a reference to 'CreateProfileTransaction' and, of course, didn't find any.
I finally grew a brain and looked at the downloaded example file from the php_cim/XML/transaction_create.php file and found that the actual API call being used is 'createCustomerProfileTransactionRequest'.
Shouldn't the line on page 10 of the CIM documentation reference that?
If that line said "The merchant can call Authorize.Net API method createCustomerProfileTransactionRequest at any time to charge the credit card (or eCheck.Net)" I wouldn't have spent the time looking for "CreateProfileTransaction".
Perhaps there actually is an API call 'CreateProfileTransaction' somewhere out there, but I can't seem to find it, nor does it appear that I need anything other than createCustomerProfileTransactionRequest to continue the payment process.
Or I may still be completely wrong..
Kudos,
JB
07-13-2011 07:26 AM
Hey JB,
Yes, it looks like there's an error in the documentation. I'll have our doc team update the guides accordingly. Appreciate the heads up!
Thanks,
Michelle
Developer Community Manager
07-14-2011 09:30 AM
Actually, the API method is not named "createCustomerProfileTransactionRequest " - that's the XML parameter name. The method name is "createCustomerProfileTransaction". See sdk/lib/AuthorizeNetCIM.php for details. :)
cheers,
Chris
07-16-2011 12:17 PM