Okay, we’re going to set up a couple of things to get started. Both in Magento admin panel and PayPal.

1. Setting up Magento
2. Setting up PayPal
3. Known problems and fix

Let’s get started!

1. Setting up Magento

First thing we gotta do is setup PayPal Standard.

Go to System -> Configuration -> PayPal Accounts

The field “Business Name”. The name you enter in this field is used when all the items in the Magento shopping cart are aggregated into a lump sum on the Paypal invoice.

The field “Business Account”. Type in the e-mail. you use to sign in with, on your PayPal Business account.

Optional: Set the “Sandbox flag” to “True”, if you’re testing this in sandbox mode.

Next up, go to: System -> Configuration –> Payment Methods –> PayPal Standard

Start out by enabling the payment method; set “Enabled” to “Yes”.

Now if you want PayPal to capture the money when to order is placed, choose “Sale” for “Payment Action”. If you want to control when the money is actually captured, set it to “Authorization”. This will only validate the credit card and let you decide when the money will be captured. We choose this option, because you’re only allowed to capture the money when the order is sent by mail.
Note: you will need to log in to your PayPal account in order to actually capture the money. But Magento will automatically be notified.

Select an option for “New order state”. It’s totally your call.

The “Transaction Type”: select “Individual Item” to have all the items in the Magento shopping cart listed separately on the Paypal invoice, or “Aggregate Order” when you just want a lump sum for the whole order on the Paypal invoice.

That was about it for Magento. Let’s have a look at your PayPal account.

2. Setting up PayPal

First, we need to enable IPN (Instant Payment Notifications). In order to do this, log in to your PayPal account and choose My Account -> Profile ->Instant Payment Notification Preferences

Click the “Edit IPN Settings” button and put in this url in the field:

• http://www.your-magento-shop-url.com/paypal/standard/ipn/

And of course, you need to enable the feature.

You might also want your customers to be automatically redirected to your shop, when they have completed the payment. To do this, go to Website Payments in My Account -> Profile. Check the “On” button and put in this URL in the field:

• http://www.your-magento-shop-url.com/paypal/standard/success/

That’s about everything. Your shop is now PayPal ready. However, you might experiencing some problems regarding double Grand Totals and Total Paid, or the order show as Completed instead of the selected value. Read on!

3. Known problems and fix

As mentioned above, some might be having problems with double Grand Totals and Total Paid, or the order show as Completed instead of the selected value. If that is the case you need to modify a core file. It’s a bug; yaiks!

Open the file:

• /app/code/core/Mage/Paypal/Model/Standard.php

On line 149 you should see the following:

• return false;

Change this to

• return true;

On line 423, edit this line:

• Mage_Sales_Model_Order::STATE_COMPLETED, true,

Instead, it should be:

• Mage_Sales_Model_Order::STATE_PROCESSING, $newOrderStatus,

Done!

Yep, it’s true! You’re actually finished! If you got any problems or questions, feel free to comment!

It has many advantages over the boring input field:

• Custom trigger for the file window
• Queue
• Restrict file types
• Progress bar
• … requires no page refresh, of course!

This solution requires JavaScript and Flash.

I encourage you strongly, to think about implementing such features. Your user will thank you! I know you want to be web 2.0′ish!

• GetById()
• GetAll()
• Insert()
• Delete()

These four functions is used in every repository 95% of the time. So I asked him; what about the times you would actually need a read-only repository? It’s not impossible you would want that.

So instead of having a “master” repository, I’d rather have a class for each object in my project. I would create an interface for each method to be reused:

public interface ICanGetAll<T>
{
    IEnumerable<T> GetAll();
}
 
public interface ICanGetById<TEntity, TKey>
{
    TEntity GetById(TKey id);
}
 
public interface ICanRemove<T>
{
    void Remove(T entity);
}
 
public interface ICanSave<T>
{
    void Save(T entity);
}

These interfaces gives us the freedom to implement them as you go. Yes, I still need a file with a repository class for each object. But that’s fine for me. Now I can make sure all my methods names are the same. Let’s say I have a Project object.

public interface IProjectRepository :
    ICanSave<Project>,
    ICanRemove<Project>,
    ICanGetById<Project, id>,
    ICanGetAll<Project>
{
    IEnumerable<Project> GetProjectsByCustomerId(int customerId);
}

This is not perfect in any way. Still, I don’t have to copy/paste a repository when I need a new one. I can simply select the methods required for the specific repository. That’s a bullet proof way for me!

I started one of my projects in Visual Studio 2008. Recently, I went to “The best of PDC 2009 with Scott Guthrie” here in Denmark. That was when I decided to upgrade some of my projects, so I could take full advantage of the upgrade from both Visual Studio, but also .NET 4.0. So I did. Or, so I thought. It all seemed straightforward, but when i opened the project in Visual Studio 2010, it converted with errors. The error I was getting was:

• The project file ‘<project file path>’ cannot be opened. The project type is not supported by this installation.

First, I was like… Did I miss something in the installation? But no, I didn’t. I started Googling around and found this solution:

• Open up the project file file in notepad (or your favorite text editor) and replace the entire <ProjectTypeGuids> tag with the following tag:
• <ProjectTypeGuids>{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{fae04ec0-301f-11d3-bf4b-00c04f79efbc}</ProjectTypeGuids>.

It works! But why, I don’t know. That’s why I just e-mailed Scott Guthrie, hoping he could shed some light over this. He actually replied me and told another guy, Eilon Lipton, to help me with the problem.

I will, of course, update this post when I have a solution – or at least a decent explanation.

I wasn’t too impressed by the other speakers, though. Mostly sales speaks and techies doing some cool stuff about WCF, Azure, etc. But it just wasn’t presented that well. Hope they won’t see my evaluation of their performances…

The worst part is, that after seeing what’s coming in .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 i find myself having a hard time, deciding which technologies to use. I was intentionally going for NHibernate, but after seeing the entities framework having a great upgrade I have my doubts. Well, I’m going to tell you, when I make up my mind.

And of course, Visual Studio 2010 is going to be a even better development tool than 2008. Can’t wait trying out the deployment features.

PS: Scott rocks, as you can see here:

Scott doing a demo of a Silverligt app using the webcam

But we don’t want kisses, hugs, or know when your parents will be getting laid. And it’s a new application every day! So here’s a guide on how to block the applications quick and easy.

When logged in, you should see your news feed. On your left hand, you’ll see a filter box.

• Click the “More” link.

• When you mouseover the news item, a “Hide” button will appear.
  Go ahead, click it!

• Hell yeah, success!
  The application will no longer annoy you, nor your news feed!

Now just repeat these steps for every application. The advantage of this method is, you get a quick overview of the applications.

Hope this helped you!