Hello everyone,
I’ve been working with the Cybersource API for a while now to integrate payment processing into a new e-commerce platform. I’ve successfully managed to set up the basic payment flow, but I’ve run into an issue when handling the payment gateway responses after a transaction attempt.
Here’s the situation:
When I submit a payment request to Cybersource using the SOAP API, I receive the response in the expected format, but there seems to be some inconsistency with how specific fields are returned based on the transaction status. For instance, in cases where the transaction is declined, I sometimes receive a "reason code" and a "message" field, but in other cases, it’s just an empty message and no clear indication of the exact issue.
My main concern is about the error handling and making sure that I am responding appropriately in the system. I want to ensure that my e-commerce platform gives users a clear and actionable response, and I don't want any confusion on their end. I’ve read through the documentation, but I’m still not sure about how to implement proper error handling for different types of failed transactions.
To give you an idea of what I’m seeing, here’s an example response from Cybersource when a transaction is declined:
<response> <reason_code>200</reason_code> <message>Transaction Declined</message> <transaction_id>ABC12345</transaction_id> </response>
However, there are times when I receive a response like this:
<response> <reason_code>200</reason_code> <message></message> <transaction_id>DEF67890</transaction_id> </response>
This inconsistency in the message field is what’s causing some challenges on my end. I need help understanding why this is happening and how I can make the error handling logic more robust. Does anyone have experience with this kind of issue? Is there a way to reliably extract a meaningful message even when the response seems incomplete?
Additionally, if anyone has best practices for handling failed transactions gracefully in Cybersource, I’d really appreciate it. I’m looking for tips on logging, user-facing error messages, or handling retries. Any resources or advice would be incredibly valuable.
I’d also love to hear from other developers on how they handle response timeouts or other inconsistencies that sometimes arise when dealing with the Cybersource API. I want to ensure that the payment experience is as seamless as possible for my customers.
Thanks in advance for any help or insights
