This is 21st century, and you might want to start accepting online payments for your services. There are many ways of achieving this. in this article, ill be showing you how to accept payments in your laravel application.

we would be making use of a laravel package called Laravel Paystack

To get the latest version of Laravel Paystack, simply require it in your project

composer require jayboss/paystack

Or add the following line to the require block of your composer.json file.

"jayboss/paystack": "1.0.2"

You'll then need to run composer install or composer update to download it and have the autoloader updated.

Once Laravel Paystack package is successfully installed in your project, you need to register the service provider. navigate to  config/app.php and add the following to the providers key and also register the Facade:.

'providers' => [
   ...
  Jayboss\Paystack\PaystackServiceProvider::class,
   ...
]

Configuration

You can publish the configuration file using this command:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Jayboss\Paystack\PaystackServiceProvider"

A configuration-file named paystack.php with some defaults information will be placed in your config directory:

<?php
return [
   'publicKey' => getenv('PAYSTACK_PUBLIC_KEY'),
   'secretKey' => getenv('PAYSTACK_SECRET_KEY'),
   'paymentUrl' => getenv('PAYSTACK_PAYMENT_URL'),
   'merchantEmail' => getenv('MERCHANT_EMAIL'),
];

Payment flow

There are various ways to make payment for an order, the following flow is expected in your checkout process:

1. The customer is redirected to the payment provider: After the customer has gone through the checkout process and is ready to pay, the customer must be redirected to the site of the payment provider. The redirection is accomplished by submitting a form with some hidden fields. The form must send a POST request to the site of the payment provider. The hidden fields minimally specify the amount that must be paid, the order id and a hash. The hash is calculated using the hidden form fields and a non-public secret. The hash used by the payment provider to verify if the request is valid.
2. The customer pays on the site of the payment provider: The customer arrives on the site of the payment provider and gets to choose a payment method. All steps necessary to pay the order are taken care of by the payment provider.
3. The customer gets redirected back to your site: After having paid the order the customer is redirected back. In the redirection request to the shop-site some values are returned. The values are usually the order id, a payment result and a hash. 

Usage

Open your .env file and add your public key, secret key, merchant email and payment url like this:

PAYSTACK_PUBLIC_KEY=xxxxxxxxxxxxx
PAYSTACK_SECRET_KEY=xxxxxxxxxxxxx
PAYSTACK_PAYMENT_URL=https://api.paystack.co
MERCHANT_EMAIL=info@yourwebsite.com

Make sure you have /payment/callback registered in Paystack Dashboard 

Set up routes and controller 

Route::post('/pay', [PaymentController::class, 'redirectToGateway'])->name('pay');
Route::get('/payment/callback', [PaymentController::class, 'handleGatewayCallback']);

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

use App\Http\Requests;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Redirect;
use Jayboss\Paystack\Paystack;

class PaymentController extends Controller
{

    /**
     * Redirect the User to Paystack Payment Page
     * @return Url
     */
    public function redirectToGateway()
    {
        try{
            $paystack = new Paystack();

            return $paystack->getAuthorizationUrl()->redirectNow();
        }catch(\Exception $e) {
            return Redirect::back()->withMessage(['msg'=>'The paystack token has expired. Please refresh the page and try again.', 'type'=>'error']);
        }        
    }

    /**
     * Obtain Paystack payment information
     * @return void
     */
    public function handleGatewayCallback()
    {
         $paystack = new Paystack();
        $paymentDetails = $paystack->getPaymentData();

        dd($paymentDetails);
        // Now you have the payment details,
        // you can store the authorization_code in your db to allow for recurrent subscriptions
        // you can then redirect or do whatever you want
    }
}

/**
 *  In the case where you need to pass the data from your 
 *  controller instead of a form
 *  Make sure to send:
 *  required: email, amount, reference, orderID(probably)
 *  optionally: currency, description, metadata
 *  e.g:
 *  
 */
$data = array(
        "amount" => 700 * 100,
        "reference" => '4g4g5485g8545jg8gj',
        "email" => 'user@mail.com',
        "currency" => "NGN",
        "orderID" => 23456,
    );

return $paystack->getAuthorizationUrl($data)->redirectNow();

Pass the payment reference from your controller to your view like so

    public function test()
    {
        $paystack = new Paystack();
        $ref = $paystack->genTranxRef();
        return view('welcome',compact('ref'));
    }

<form method="POST" action="{{ route('pay') }}" accept-charset="UTF-8" class="form-horizontal" role="form">
   <div class="row" style="margin-bottom:40px;">
       <div class="col-md-8 col-md-offset-2">
           <p>
               <div>
                   Lagos Eyo Print Tee Shirt
                   ₦ 2,950
               </div>
           </p>
           <input type="hidden" name="email" value="otemuyiwa@gmail.com"> {{-- required --}}
           <input type="hidden" name="orderID" value="345">
           <input type="hidden" name="amount" value="800"> {{-- required in kobo --}}
           <input type="hidden" name="quantity" value="3">
           <input type="hidden" name="currency" value="NGN">
           <input type="hidden" name="metadata" value="{{ json_encode($array = ['key_name' => 'value',]) }}" > {{-- For other necessary things you want to add to your payload. it is optional though --}}
           <input type="hidden" name="reference" value="{{ $ref }}"> {{-- required --}}
           
           <input type="hidden" name="split_code" value="SPL_EgunGUnBeCareful"> {{-- to support transaction split. more details https://paystack.com/docs/payments/multi-split-payments/#using-transaction-splits-with-payments --}}
           <input type="hidden" name="split" value="{{ json_encode($split) }}"> {{-- to support dynamic transaction split. More details https://paystack.com/docs/payments/multi-split-payments/#dynamic-splits --}}
           {{ csrf_field() }} {{-- works only when using laravel 5.1, 5.2 --}}
           <input type="hidden" name="_token" value="{{ csrf_token() }}"> {{-- employ this in place of csrf_field only in laravel 5.0 --}}
           <p>
               <button class="btn btn-success btn-lg btn-block" type="submit" value="Pay Now!">
                   <i class="fa fa-plus-circle fa-lg"></i> Pay Now!
               </button>
           </p>
       </div>
   </div>
</form>

When clicking the submit button the customer gets redirected to the Paystack site. Paystack will redirect the customer to the url of the route that is specified in the Callback URL of the Web Hooks section on Paystack dashboard. We must validate if the redirect to our site is a valid request (we don't want imposters to wrongfully place non-paid order) In the controller that handles the request coming from the payment provider.

$paystack->getPaymentData() // This function calls the verification methods and ensure it is a valid transaction else it throws an exception.

You can checkout the latest releases and read more about this package 
 

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