I want to start accepting Bitcoin on my website.
In order to do that, I wrote the following piece of code, but I truly struggle to understand how I can implement proper business logic after that the transaction is completed.
Here is the code:
<html>
<head>
<title>Pay with Bitcoin</title>
<script>
//Gets the URL of the Webpage and gets the price value of this transaction in USD.
//For simplicity Here the Value is passed in the URL.
//However in production you wanna use POST instead of GET.
const myUrl = window.location.href;
const url = new URL(myUrl);
const usdPrice = url.searchParams.get("price");
//This is the function where all the magin happens
const showQR = () => {
//URL of the api which will provide us with current BTC exchange rate
const apiUrl = "https://blockchain.info/ticker";
const hr = new XMLHttpRequest();
hr.open('GET', apiUrl, true);
hr.onreadystatechange = function(){
//Make sure the API sent a valid response
if(hr.readyState == 4){
let ticker = JSON.parse(hr.responseText);
//Get last BTC/USD exchange value from the API , then convert Price from USD to BTC
let BTCprice = ticker.USD.last;
let btcToPay = usdPrice / BTCprice;
//Make sure you have just 8 decimal points in your BTC price!!
btcToPay = btcToPay.toFixed(8);
//Use google API (or other...) to create the QR code. Pass on your btc public address and
//the amount (btc price) dynamically created. Message and label parameters can be dynamic too.
let qrurl = "https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=250x250&cht=qr&chl=bitcoin:1BAnkZn1qW42uRTyG2sCRN9F5kgtfb5Bci?amount="+btcToPay+"%26label=CarRental%26message=BookingID123456";
//Populate the 'btc' DIV with QR code and other info...
document.getElementById('btc').innerHTML = "<img src=" +qrurl+"><br> <span class = 'greenMoney'>" + usdPrice + " usd / " + btcToPay + " BTC </span>";
}
}
hr.send();
};
</script>
</head>
<body onload = "showQR()">
<h1>Pay with BitCoin</h1>
<div id = "btc">
</div>
</body>
</html>
This code does the following:
Gets current USD/BTC exchange rate using the blockchain API.
takes the price in USD for the URL and converts it into BTC
generates a QR code using google API.
Embeds the price, label and message into the QR code
Renders the QR code in a DIV
I ve also set up a web hook service which will be listening to new transactions happening in the specified wallet address. Then a callback to my server is made, by mean of a POST request.
The problem is: the label and message parameters passed to the QR code will not be written in the blockchain.
They are just a handy reference for the customer to remind him what that specific transaction paid for.
As a result the callback to my server is practically useless.
In fact, the callback doesn't return any Booking Id or any other piece of information which could help me to understand who paid for what. Needless to say, in this scenario no business logic is possible: I can't update the order status on my DB, I can't send a confirmation email to the right customer.
How can I embed relevant information (e.g. Booking ID) into the BTC payment, ideally through the QR code?
If this is possible, how can I retrieve this information later on when my server receives the callback informing me that a new payment was made to my BTC wallet?
In short, you can't.
When accepting payments, you are supposed to give each invoice a new BTC address. This way, when you receive notification of an incoming transaction, you can check the receiving address to see which invoice is being paid, and compare the received amount against the expected amount.
Note
Technically, you could embed stuff like a order ID into an OP_RETURN. However, most wallets don't support transactions like that, and any users who want to pay you from an exchange account would be unable to comply.
#Raghav Sood thank you for your input which routed me to the right direction.
Using NodeJS/Express/MongoDB in the backend, I managed to implement a solution which I would like to share here.
Before starting, I wanna make a big disclaimer: this solution is not the only one, it is not the best one, it is not the fastest and probably it is not the most elegant.
Anyway, this solution has the advantage of not relying on packaged third parties solutions. This is in line with the spirit of the whole "no intermediation" philosophy of the bitcoin community. Most imortantly, your XPub always stay in your server and is NOT shared with any external service, which is probably the wisest approach.
Having said that, here is how one can show dynamic unique BTC addresses to customers:
First of all , I put in place a counter which keeps track of how many btc addresses were created for customers from a my HD wallet.
This is important to make sure than you never present the same address twice to customers, which is good for privacy of all parties and also for the sake of implementing business logic in your app.
In order to do this, I store a "counter value" into my DB. Everytime someone visits the BTC payment page, this value is retrived from mongo using a "dealCount" function and is assigned to a "serialPay" variable, which is equal to the value gotten from Mongo + 1. In the backend, the code would be something like this:
`function dealCount(){`
return new Promise(function(resolve, reject){
Deal.find({_id: "ID_OF_OBJ_WHERE_YOU_STORE_COUNTER"}, function(err, data){
if(err){
console.log(err);
}
resolve(data[0].serialDeal + 1);
})
})
};
The new value obtained (which later on will be saved again into Mongo in order to keep track of addresses created) is used to generate the new BTC public address for the customer at hand. If you keep reading you will see how.
To create new public addresses dynamically, one needs the xPub Key of his or her HD Wallet. If one is coding in NodeJS there are a couple of libraries (which can be imported into the server) that will enable this operation rather easily: bitcoinjs-lib and/or bitcore-lib. Personally I opted for Bitcore-lib, because there are less dependencies to deal with and I found the supporting material easier to digest.
Codewise, address generation goes as follows:
const bitcore = require('bitcore-lib');
app.post("/pay.html", urlencodedParser, function(req, res){
let serialPay = dealCount();
serialPay.then(function(serialPay){
const pub = new bitcore.HDPublicKey('INSERT_HERE_YOUR_XPUB_KEY');
let derivedHdPk = pub.derive('m/0/'+serialPay);
let derivedPk = derivedHdPk.publicKey;
let myDynAddress = new bitcore.Address(derivedPk);
res.render('pay', {myDynAddress: myDynAddress});
});
});
Then, using EJS as a templating engine, I could easily make the receiving bitcoin address dynamic in the front-end (/pay.ejs):
let myDynAddress = "<%=myDynAddress%>";
let qrurl = "https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=250x250&cht=qr&chl=bitcoin:"+myDynAddress+"?amount="+btcToPay+"%26label=CarRental";
This will generate the QR Code Dynamically. In the original question, one can see how to render that into the webpage. In the meantime one should also put in place a function to store the updated "serialPay" counter back to the DB.
At this point one should only start monitoring incoming (non-confirmed) payments to the dynamic BTC address generated. A simple way to do it, is using the blockchain.info websocket API. When the payment arrives, things go forward as suggested by #Raghav Sood: one checks the incoming transaction making sure the customer paid the right amount to the right address.
Now you know who paid for what and all sorts of business logics can be triggered.
Related
I am designing a website where when the user comes and enters his email id, a corresponding value gets printed on the website.
I have the below data on my real-time firebase database.
How do I write a javascript function in my JS file so that when a user enters his/her email-id, the value of the total gets printed on the website?
I have tried something like this:
function getdata(){
var email=document.getElementById("email").value;
firebase.database().ref('0/'+email).once('value').then(function(snapshort){
var total=snapshort.val().total;
document.getElementById("total").innerHTML=total;
})}
I think you're trying to perform a query based on the email property of the node.
In that case, it'd be:
firebase.database().ref()
.orderByChild("email")
.equalTo(email)
.once('value').then((results) => {
results.forEach((snapshot) => {
let total = snapshot.val().total;
document.getElementById("total").innerHTML=total;
});
});
I recommend reading the Firebase Realtime Database documentation end-to-end, as it should answer many of the questions you may have about the API. A few hours spent there now, will save you many hours down the line.
Note:
The asynchronous nature of firebase has been discussed thousands of times here, but my low reputation number does not allow for a comment on an existing question. That's why I have asked this question.
I am a noob, so please help me understand the implementation in an easy to understand manner.
Steps to implement:
User enters a value in the HTML input box
Search the input value in the firebase db (showMessage() gets called)
Display an appropriate result based on the search result in step 2
Problem faced:
The message displayed in step 3 takes almost an average of 1.75 seconds to display. This experience is not user-friendly. I want to display the message as soon as possible i.e. want to reduce the fetch time.
Probable root causes:
Either my way of fetching the data from firebase dB is incorrect (I still don't understand how to keep a promise :()
Or The mechanism of search and display is not right
var full_name;
function showMessage(){
extractData();
}
function extractData(){
test(function(returnValue) {
custom_message = searchMessage(returnValue);
var container = document.querySelector('#placeholder');
var para = document.createElement('p');
var custom_message = "Happy happy, buds!";
para.innerHTML = custom_message;
para.className = "message";
container.appendChild(para);
});
}
function test(callback) {
var ref = firebase.database().ref();
ref.on('value', function(snapshot) {
var data = snapshot.val();
callback(data);
}, function (error) {
console.log("Error: " + error.code);
});
}
function searchMessage(data){
for(var i = 0; i < data.length; i++)
{
name_f_data = data[i].firstName.concat(" ", data[i].lastName);
if(full_name.toLowerCase() == name_f_data.toLowerCase())
{
console.log(name_f_data.toLowerCase());
console.log(full_name.toLowerCase());
return data[i].message;
}
}
}
The time a read operation takes depends on:
The latency of your connection to Firebase's servers
The amount of data you are reading
The bandwidth of your connection
The time it takes Firebase to process the request
In most cases, the time Firebase takes is only a very small portion of the total time, and most of your time actually goes to the data transfer, which depends purely on the bandwidth and amount of data. If this is the first time you're reading data from Firebase in the page, the latency also matters more, as Firebase has to establish a connection, which takes a few roundtrips.
Your current code is downloading all data from the database, and then searching in the JavaScript code for a child node that matches a certain value. The best way to reduce the time that takes (apart from upgrading to a fast connection) is to transfer less data, which you can do by using Firebase's query mechanism to do the filtering on the server.
You can get pretty close with:
var ref = firebase.database().ref();
var query = ref.orderByChild().startAt(firstName).endAt(firstName+"~");
query.once('value', function(snapshot) {
var data = snapshot.val();
callback(data);
This will significantly reduce the amount of data transferred. A few notes though:
The query returns just the people that have the first name you're looking for. It does not yet filter on the last name, so you'll still need to filter that in the client-side code.
To further optimize this, store the full name (which you now compose in the client-side code) in the database so that you can query on that and reduce data transfer even more.
Firebase queries are case sensitive, so the query only returns data where the case matches exactly. If you want to query case-indifferent, consider storing a toLowerCase() value in the database.
Be sure to define an index on firstName, as otherwise the Firebase database will still send all data to the client, and the SDK will perform the filtering client-side.
Have created a chat application and we use firebase for realtime communication.
Sometimes i noticed that push() method shuffle the list data. We can see in the below image :
If we see in above image i am just trying to communicate with someone i said hello in reply user said hey, again i said i need some help then user said That's what I'm here for. What can I assist you with? in the reply but if we see in the image users reply is appearing first.
It happens intermittently that's why i didn't figure out this problem. So please someone help me out what shall i doing wrong.
var pushMessageToFB = function(){
var chatMsgRef = db.child("chatMessages").child("gr1").child("ch_usr1_usr2");
var message = {
type: "chat",
content: data.messageText,
timestamp: Date.now(),
by: user.id
};
chatMsgRef.push(message, function(err){
if (err){
console.log('error occurred while pushing message to fb : err ' + JSON.stringify(err));
}
});};
var loadChatMessages = function(){
var chatMsgRef = db.child('chatMessages').child("gr1").child("ch_usr1_usr2");
$scope.chatMessages = chatMsgRef.orderByKey().limitToLast(50);
};
Don't use Date for remote data. It will be slightly offset on every machine. Use ServerValue.TIMESTAMP which Firebase will convert to the server's Unix epoch time when the data is written. This ensures consistency of order across clients.
You didn't provide any code for how you're reading or displaying the chat messages, but since you're trying to show them in chronological order I assume your query uses orderBy("timestamp"). If you use ServerValue.TIMESTAMP when you write the message it will be guaranteed to sort in the order that it was written to the database.
I've been told by BC support that this isn't possible, but I would be surprised if there really wasn't a way.
I need to be able to automatically assign a customer to a specific customer group when they create an account. My thought:
I would add an extra field to the sign-up form
Provide a user with a code (a string or number)
User enters code when creating new account
User hits submit
On form submit I would grab the value of the extra field:
var codeInput = document.getElementById('code-input').value;
I would then compare that value to a pre-defined string, and if there is a match, I would assign that customer to groupX (with a group id of 8):
if ( codeInput === "codeIGaveToTheUser" ) {
currentUserGroupID = 8;
}
Is it possible to assign a customer to a specific group on sign-up like this (or any other way)?
Any help is much appreciated.
Although using BigCommerce webhooks would ensure the highest success rate of executing your customer group assignment app, it requires quite a bit of setup on BigCommerce (creating a draft app, getting an oAuth key, jumping jacks, etc), and may be a bit of overkill for your requirements.
Here's an easier way, in my {mostly} humble opinion, that takes advantage of much of what you included in your original question. Any solution though will nonetheless require an external server to handle the customer group assignment through the BigCommerce API.
Within the BigCommerce control panel, add in the extra field to the user sign up form like you mentioned.
So as you can see, this new input field has been added natively to the default registration page:
So now, when a user creates an account on your site, the value for the Signup Code (the custom field created) will be directly accessible through the API for that customer's account. Take a look at what that JSON data looks like:
Okay, so this is nice and all, but how do we automate it?
To do so, we will have to let our external application know that a customer just registered. Furthermore, our external application will need some sort of reference to this newly created customer, so that it knows which customer to update the customer group for. Normally a BigCommerce webhook would notify us of all this, but since we aren't using a BigCommerce webhook, here's the alternative method to triggering the external script.
We will trigger our external application via the BigCommerce Registration Confirmation page - createaccount_thanks.html. This page is loaded immediately after a customer creates an account, so it is the perfect place to insert our trigger script.
Additionally, now that the customer is logged in, we can access the customer's email address via a BigCommerce Global system variable -%%GLOBAL_CurrentCustomerEmail%%.
We should make an HTTP request from this page to our external application along with the customer's email address. Specifically, we can make an XMLHttpRequest via JavaScript, or to be modern, we'll use Ajax via jQuery. This script should be inserted before the closing </body> tag on createaccount_thanks.html.
Example of POST request (although a GET would suffice as well):
<script>
$(function() {
$('.TitleHeading').text('One moment, we are finalizing your account. Please wait.').next().hide(); // Let the customer know they should wait a second before leaving this page.
//** Configure and Execute the HTTP POST Request! **//
$.ajax({
url: 'the_url_to_your_script.com/script.php',
type: 'POST',
contentType: 'application/json',
data: JSON.stringify({email:"%%GLOBAL_CurrentCustomerEmail%%"}),
success: function() {
// If the customer group assignment goes well, display page and proceed normally. This callback is only called if your script returns a 200 status code.
$('.TitleHeading').text('%%LNG_CreateAccountThanks%%').next().show();
},
error: function() {
// If the customer group assignment failed, you might want to tell your customer to contact you. This callback is called if your script returns any status except 200.
$('.TitleHeading').text('There was a problem creating your account').after('Please contact us at +1-123-456-7890 so that we can look into the matter. Please feel free to continue shopping in the meantime.');
}
});
});
</script>
Now finally, you just need to create your serverside application responsible for handling the request above, and updating the customer's customer group. You can use any language that you desire, and BigCommerce even offers several SDK's you can use to save mega development time. Just remember that you need to host it somewhere online, and then insert its URL to the JS script above.
PHP Example (quick & dirty):
git clone https://github.com/bigcommerce/bigcommerce-api-php.git
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php && php composer.phar install
<?php
/**
* StackOverflow/BigCommerce :: Set Customer Group Example
* http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37201106/
*
* Automatically assigning a customer group.
*/
//--------------MAIN------------------------//
// Load Dependencies:
require ('bigcommerce-api-php/vendor/autoload.php');
use Bigcommerce\Api\Client as bc;
// Define BigCommerce API Credentials:
define('BC_PATH', 'https://store-abc123.mybigcommerce.com');
define('BC_USER', 'user');
define('BC_PASS', 'token');
// Load & Parse the Email From the Request Body;
$email = json_decode(file_get_contents('php://input'))->email;
// Execute Script if API Connection Good & Email Set:
if ($email && setConnection()) {
$customer = bc::getCollection('/customers?email=' .$email)[0]; //Load customer by email
$cgid = determineCustomerGroup($customer->form_fields[0]->value); //Determine the relevant customer group ID, via your own set string comparisons.
bc::updateCustomer($customer->id, array('customer_group_id' => $cgid)) ? http_send_status(200) : http_send_status(500); //Update the customer group.
} else {
http_send_status(500);
exit;
}
//-------------------------------------------------//
/**
* Sets & tests the API connection.
* #return bool true if the connection successful.
*/
function setConnection() {
try {
bc::configure(array(
'store_url' => BC_PATH,
'username' => BC_USER,
'api_key' => BC_PASS
));
} catch (Exception $e) {
return false;
}
return bc::getResource('/time') ? true : false; //Test Connection
}
/**
* Hard define the customer group & signup code associations here.
* #param string The code user used at signup.
* #return int The associated customergroup ID.
*/
function determineCustomerGroup($signupCode) {
switch ($signupCode) {
case 'test123':
return 1;
case 'codeIGaveToTheUser':
return 8;
default:
return 0;
}
}
So then you would do your customer group string comparisons directly in the serverside program. I'd recommend you rewrite your own BC API script as the one above in quality is really something along the lines of functional pseudo-code, but more so present to show the general idea. HTH
You would need to set up a server to listen for webhooks unless you wanted to do a cron job. We have some basic information on the developer portal, but I included more resources below. From there, you'd need to choose your server language of choice to listen for the webhooks once they been created, respond correctly (200 response if received), execute code based on this information, and then take action against the BC API.
So if you were looking for a code, you'd need to listen for the store/customer/created webhook, and have your code look for a custom field that contained the code. If it was present, then take action. Else, do nothing.
https://developer.github.com/webhooks/configuring/
http://coconut.co/how-to-create-webhooks
How do I receive Github Webhooks in Python
Can I restrict the number of users in a session? Is there any option in vline.session? Please guide if this can be done by writing custom javascript.
EDIT:
Referring to https://vline.com/developer/docs/vline.js/vline.MediaSession#examples, a two party call controller is explained. I want to ask is there any way to restrict number of users in a session? There is no such option present in session's docs. Is it supported as a part of the API?
If this can be done using custom javascript, how?
As a part of my effort, I have tried to implement vline-django examples, but could not find a section in documentation that addresses this issue.
EDIT 2: The code that is working for me.
var vlineClient = (function(){
var client, session,
authToken = {{ user|vline_auth_token|safe }},
serviceId = {% vline_service_id %},
profile = {{ user|vline_user_profile|safe }};
// Create vLine client
window.vlineClient = client = vline.Client.create({"serviceId": serviceId, "ui": true});
// Add login event handler
client.on('login', onLogin);
// Do login
client.login(serviceId, profile, authToken);
function onLogin(event) {
session = event.target;
// Find and init call buttons
var callButtons = document.getElementsByClassName('callbutton');
for (var i=0; i < callButtons.length; ++i) {
initCallButton(callButtons[i]);
}
}
// add event handlers for call button
function initCallButton(button) {
var userId = button.getAttribute('data-userid');
// fetch person object associated with username
session.getPerson(userId).done(function(person) {
// update button state with presence
function onPresenceChange() {
button.setAttribute('data-presence', person.getPresenceState());
}
// set current presence
onPresenceChange();
// handle presence changes
person.on('change:presenceState', onPresenceChange);
// start a call when button is clicked
button.addEventListener('click', function() {
person.startMedia();
});
});
}
return client;
})();
How do I move ahead?
Reference: https://vline.com/developer/docs/vline.js/
if i understand correctly the OP is trying to make a multi-user chat room - this is also what i wanted to do with vline and because i wanted a/v chat as well the number of participants should obviously be capped - it appears that the term 'session' is causing the confusion here so i will refrain from using it
i worked around this by creating a fixed number of users in a db and handling authentication
myself before actually associating a visitor with one of the prepared users - so some javascript logs in each visitor as one of those existing 'anonymous' users and sets only a logged_in? flag in the db so that the next visitor will log in as the next vacant user slot and when all slots are occupied the visitor gets a "chat room full - try again later" response
probably not the most elegant solution - for example the visitor chosen usernames are stored client-side and must be re-assigned to one of the user-definable vline session vars so it can be passed along with each message and the logged_in? db flag needs to be reset when the user exits
note that this was almost a year ago so im a bit foggy on exactly what i did but my app (rails) in up on github if youre interested to fork it - also i should add that although this sort of thing wasnt strictly supported by the vline API at the time there were at least some hints that some analogous feature was being prepared for so there may be some API support for this now - i did notice since then that they have released a "chat room demo" app on github and i would expect that their implementation is more concise than mine so you may want to look at that first - my app tho does have a mostly complete UI with gravatars and collaboration is welcomed