Braintree Articles Launches
We’ve just added a new section to the Developer’s Community, Articles. These articles and tutorials are meant to be references to help you, the developer see some common uses and practices for integrating with the Braintree APIs. They begin by describing a scenario and show you how to build the necessary query string. At the end of the article, you should be able to take that query string, change the necessary values for each parameter and use in your own application.
The first article is on Sending Money to Your Customer’s Accounts, and many more are in the works. I would love any feedback you could give on the layout, content, or quality.
If you have a suggestion for an articles, please send and email to developer@getbraintree.com.
Braintree Tools Launches
We have just launched the Braintree Tools Site, which is a collection of simple tools that act as a wrapper around the Braintree Payment Solutions APIs.
- Hasher
- This tool can be used to confirm an MD5 hash that you are generating is valid. Simply input your values, and submit to see the string that was to be hashed, and the generated MD5 hash.
- QuickGet
- This simple wrapper allows you to execute transactions against our payment processing and SecureVault APIs. Input your username and password and type out your query using
key=valuepairs. - QuickQuery
- This simple wrapper allows you to execute transactions against our query APIs. Input your username and password and type out your query using
key=valuepairs.
WARNING This tool set is for instructional purposes only. If used on a live account, real transactions will be sent to the payment gateway.
I’ve got some more plans on adding a dynamic Transparent Redirect form generator and a couple of other things that hopefully will hopefully make your life a little easier.
I’ll be releasing the source of this application, written in Camping, but for you early adopters, you might be able to find it on a new and popular distributed version control system. It needs some work, but it’s usable.
Braintree Smorgasbord
It’s been a while since we’ve posted so I thought I’d take a few moments and collect some of the recent goings-on in the Braintree Developer Community, as well as some things that are coming down the pipe. As always, my complete focus is eliminating the fog and friction of your development with the Braintree offerings.
API Revamping
I’ve spent a lot of time revamping the Braintree APIs and I’m finally satisfied with the format. The content still needs work, and this is my public acknowledgment of the fact. As a developer myself, I realize that the most import thing that I can do for you is to provide top-notch docs. There’s very little that our APIs can’t do, and I need to make that more clear.
The major change that I’ve made is taking the concept of the Direct Post and Transparent Redirect and made them into authentication methods. I think that originally, it was confusing to think of them as separate APIs, when in fact they do the exact same thing through different authentication methods, that’s it and that’s all. It’s also important to note that you can use either of these when doing payment processing or SecureVault transactions.
For the time being, we offer the following APIs:
Please note, that I’m just fiddling with the organization and the content, the functionality has remained the same.
Brik-a-Brak
Here’s just a few things that you might be interested in:
Braintree is on Twitter
You can follow us on Twitter. We’re braintreeps, and initially it’ll just parrot the headlines for blog posts, but we’ll eventually expand the content of it.
Braintree “Featured” in Advanced Rails Recipes
A recipe written by Cody Fauser, of Jaded Pixel discusses uses ActiveMerchant with Braintree in the next edition of Advanced Rails Recipes. Another great job, Cody.
Recurring Billing is Hot
There has lately been a lot of questions on Recurring Billing, it’s a really great feature that requires more explanation and focus. Look for blog posts, examples, and more spotlight.
Examples and Samples
I’m going to start posting more examples on the blog and the forums. I think for a lot of people, it’s much more helpful to see something in the flesh, as opposed to an explanation.
That’s all I can think of, for the moment, enjoy the Smorgasbord!
Biztech article on PCI Compliance
I recently coauthored an article with Ben Rothke, CISSP, QSA, CISM for CDW’s Biztech Magazine. Ben is a Senior Security Consultant for BT INS.
In the article we outline 10 Best Practices for PCI DSS Compliance for merchants working towards obtaining compliance internally (versus using and outsourced solution).
API Docs Now Available Online
If you haven’t already noticed, I’ve added a section for the Braintree API docs. These docs are definitely a work in progress, but I think they’ll answer at least 80% of the questions we get at first glance.
If you think we’re missing something or would like to see a different format, just let use know in the Braintree Forums.
You will need to login to view these docs, so signup now!
Custom PCI DSS Compliant solution
We just completed rolling out a creative solution for a national food service company. The company receives customer food orders via their corporate site and needs to forward the order and credit card details to the appropriate distributor or franchise for processing and order completion. They approached us with their challenge of being able to continually do this in an automated and PCI DSS Compliant manner.
Developer Site Outage
I forgot to mention earlier this week about the cause of our outage earlier this week. We had a problem with our registrar, who inadvertently deleted our name server entries for this domain due to some miscommunication. We’ve moved some stuff around to prevent this from happening again. Sorry for any inconvenience this caused.
Forums Added to Braintree Developer Community
For those of you reading through RSS, I just wanted to mention that I’ve added the Braintree Developer Community Forums . I wrote the forums myself with inspiration from Beast. If you think there’s a feature missing, or would like to see feeds for some of the topics, just let me know.
Thanks Rick and Josh for writing some very readable software!
Buzz About Billing
PJ Hyett from ErrFree has started a series on the Err Free blog overviewing some of the decisions they made while developing FamSpam in regards to credit card processing. The first couple of articles give some really good insight into their decision making process, including storage of credit card information with a 3rd party and integrating payment processes directly into their application.
Planned article topics are:
- site integration or third party
- dealing with credit card storage
- handling subscriptions
- selecting a gateway and merchant account
Great job PJ! I’m looking forward to the last 2 articles.
Braintree Featured In ActiveMerchant Peepcode
I am pleased to announce that Braintree is the featured payment gateway in the new ActiveMerchant Peepcode pdf. Written by Cody Fauser, of JadedPixel, this pdf will get you up and running with credit card processing on your site.
ActiveMerchant provides a consistent interface to over 30 gateways all around the world and has processed millions of dollars of transactions since 2006. This 70 page book starts with a simple payment and steps through the development of database models and gateway interaction code within a Rails application.
You’ll also learn how to write a comprehensive test suite and integrate the Acts as State Machine plugin to build a reliable payment processing system. Finally, you’ll learn about industry standards and security precautions.
I’ve read through it a couple of times and Peepcode has once again taken a complex topic and made it quite simple. They have a knack for finding writers and screencasters with a passion for teaching and communicate advanced ideas and concepts with ease.
Congrats to Cody and Peepcode!
Gomobo Case Study
Mobo is the leading remote mobile payments firm in the US. Founded in 2005, Mobo has created a cross-carrier, payment card industry compliant mobile commerce system and applied it to the most frequent, routine, and mainstream transaction type: quick serve restaurant food ordering.
GoMobo is the remote mobile payments killer app. GoMobo lets customers order and pay ahead online or with a text message and Skip the Line at busy quick service restaurants. GoMobo is the equivalent of EZ Pass for the quick service restaurant industry, optimizing throughput capacity for restaurants and increasing speed of service for customers. GoMobo launched its New York City beta program in May 2006.
Braintree's Developer Community - Making You Look Good
We thought it would be worth the while to make a more formal ‘introduction’ post to lay out what we’re hoping to accomplish with our newly launched Developer Community – and get you excited that we’re coming to the rescue in one of the most challenging and difficult industries in existence – credit card processing.
What We Do
First, a little bit about what we do. Braintree is a comprehensive provider of payment processing solutions. We provide businesses everything they need to accept payment from customers – a one-stop-shop. We provide the merchant account for credit card processing, e-check, ACH and EFT processing, payment gateway, virtual terminal, risk and fraud managment, remost storage of credit card information, simplified PCI Compliance and alternative payments.
Welcome to the Braintree Developer Community
This site is for developers who use the robust Braintree API to develop their own applications. The Braintree Developer Community is a “work-in-progess”, but we’ve got some great ideas on how to provide great content for developers to use to leverage all of our services in the easiest ways.
Keep checking back as I start to add more content and features. I look forward to helping you all integrate your applications with Braintree!
