Payment feature in rails

This document pretend to introduce you, with a complete example, how you can implement different payment methods with Ruby on Rails.

In the example, we will cover Stripe and Braintree two very well-known payment platforms.

How to integrate with Stripe

Add Stripe gem to our Gemfile

gem 'stripe'

Add initializers/stripe.rb file. This file contains the necessary keys for connecting with your stripe account.

require 'require_all'

Rails.configuration.stripe = {
    :publishable_key => ENV['STRIPE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY'],
    :secret_key      => ENV['STRIPE_SECRET_KEY']
}

Stripe.api_key = Rails.configuration.stripe[:secret_key]

How to create a new customer to Stripe

Stripe::Customer.create({email: email, source: payment_token})

This code creates a new customer on Stripe with given email address and source.

payment_token is the token given from the client-side that contains a payment method like a credit card or bank account. More info: Stripe.js client-side

How to retrieve a plan from Stripe

Stripe::Plan.retrieve(stripe_plan_id)

This code retrieves a plan from Stripe by its id.

How to create a subscription

When we have a customer and a plan we can create a new subscription on Stripe.

Stripe::Subscription.create(customer: customer.id, plan: plan.id)

It will create a new subscription and will charge our User. It’s important to know what really happens on Stripe when we subscribe a user to a plan, you will find more info here: Stripe Subscription lifecycle.

How to charge a user with a single payment

Sometimes we want to charge our users just a single time, for do that we will do the next.

Stripe::Charge.create(amount:   amount, customer: customer, currency: currency)

In that case, we are charging our user one time for given amount.

Common errors:

The amount must be sent in integer form, that means, 2000 will be 20 units of currency. [Check this example](https://stripe.com/docs/charges)

You cannot charge a user in two currencies. If the user was charged in EUR at any moment in the past you cannot charge the user in USD.

You cannot charge user without source (payment method).

Remarks

Documentation.

Stripe

Braintree