User:Mbecker/PAD

=Paypal Automated Donations Project=

What is PAD?
PAD was concieved by User:Mbecker and User:Daniel Mayer to help with the automation of the processing of information related to donations made to Wikimedia through PayPal.

How does it work?
PayPal provides a mechanism called ipn for sellers that allows them to recieve transaction details through the http POST mechanism. The procedure is in three parts. First PayPal sends the transaction details to our cgi. Then our cgi responds back to PayPal with the transaction details to ensure the data didn indeed come from PayPal. The final stage involves ensuring the data is good, and then doing things with the data.

What can you do with this data?
Simple tasks to be automated will be things such as counting of funds recieved along with the listing of all donations for record keeping purposes. Future tasks could and most likely will include things such as sending thank you e-mails, etc...

Check List

 * 1) Recieve data DONE
 * 2) Send data DONE (Coded and tested but currently disabled because the apaches won't allow outgoing traffic.)
 * 3) Write data to a log file DONE
 * 4) Keep running total of money recieved
 * 5) Keep track of all transactions anonymizing those who wish to remain anonymous
 * 6) Send out thank you e-mails
 * 7) Setup script to run on https.

The code
To view the current source code for this program run this cgi

Links

 * Sample ipn code in Python
 * ipn info