paypal sold out redirect

[lmaj]

Not sure if my problem lies within Paypal or with FutureQuest.

I use Paypal Add to Cart buttons on my site and have the buttons set up in Paypal with inventory tracking. This prevents buyers from purchasing items that are currently sold out. As the buyer goes through the check out process, they should be redirected to a URL I specify ~ but this never happens.

They instead see the following:
"Method Not Allowed
The requested method POST is not allowed for the URL /shop/sorry.htm
Apache/1.3.41 Server at www. MYSITE .net Port 80"

Is there something I need to do on my site to "allow this method"?

[Bob]

Apache/1.3.41 Server at www.MYSITE.net Port 80"

If the above is the exact error then there is a coding issue as "mysite.net" would not be valid.

If you modified the error to hide the actual domain name then it may still be a coding issue and the 'Action' may not be valid.

-Bob

[lmaj]

Yes ~ I changed the url name. The actual page that paypal is not able to access is:

http://www.cobblestonecreations.net/shop/sorry.htm

I'd appreciate any help, including pointing me to tutorials. newbie here.

[Arthur]

PayPal is trying to send data about the purchase to your site, through a POST request. The data in this request can't be sent to a static HTML page, only scripts can process POST requests. Scripts can be written in PHP, Perl, etc.

I believe that in order to process the payment, your script will need to send a validation request to the PayPal server, based on the data received. You should contact PayPal for more information, if I'm not mistaken, this is where you should start; https://www.paypal.com/ipn

-Arthur

[lmaj]

Thanks for your thougths, Arthur. But the problem is not after a sale is made ~ it is when someone tries to purchase an out-of-stock item. I did pass along your idea to Paypal and received the following:

"Your issue is not caused by anything regarding IPNs. IPNs only come into the picture after a payment has been received and they are completely separate from any PayPal pages/webpage navigation. IPNs are not email notifications either. An IPN is an HTTP POST we send to a script hosted on your website, that would then do with the data whatever the script is programmed to do. There are many possibilities when using our IPN system, but those possibilities rely on how your IPN script is programmed.

Your error: "Method Not Allowed
The requested method POST is not allowed for the URL /shop/sorry.htm
Apache/1.3.41 Server at www.cobblestonecreations.net Port 80"

Is caused by your server's settings. This has nothing to do with PayPal. Unfortunately, the method that we use to send people to your 'out of stock' URL cannot be changed so you will need to talk to your webhost about allowing an HTTP POST to that URL."

So now my question is ~ does Futurequest allow such postings? And if so where do I go to learn how to make it happen correctly on my site?

[Arthur]

I was just guessing about the IPN thing, but the first paragraph still applies. You can't POST data to a static HTML file, only to some sort of script, be it a PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, or whatever script.

If you don't need to process the data in the POST request, you could simply rename sorry.htm to sorry.php and set /shop/sorry.php as the URL.

-Arthur

[lmaj]

Arthur,
Thank-you! Thank-you! Thank-you! The renaming worked!