How To: Add PayPal Buy Now Buttons to DNN

Thank you for the info John and I have worked on it a bit in my site.  It "seems" to cause a problem and some odd behavior.

I added two text/html modules to a page, added a differing product to each module, with this code to submit the products.  Works fine, but does a few wierd things.

1.) If I use this code to submit a product to a PayPal standard cart, then try to use "settings" from the control panel on the same page with the javascript added in a text/html module, it opens a new cart window and adds another product to it. If I click "Add" from the control panel, same wierd behavior.

2.) If I am logged in as an admin or host, clicking the button to add to the cart will actually open two carts, the first one with one product added, the second with two products added.

3.) If I have NOT previously clicked a button for a product, then the control panel "settings," "add" and so on work fine, until I click a button once, then the behavior begins as in "1.)" here above.

I am not sure what to make of all this.  Oh, by the way, the "continue shopping" at the bottom of the paypal cart doesn't work either (no longer minimizes cart) and any additional items open new/additional cart windows. 

I have tried target=_blank and target=_paypal to name the target window to eliminnate duplicate windows with no joy. In classic .asp none of this behavior happens and I am sort of at a loss as to how or why this is occuring in a DNN page with 4.4.1 under .net 2.0.

Guess I might have to study Asp.Net 2.0 some more to get a better handle on all this.

Any Ideas?

Clay

Interesting stuff.  Thank you again John. 

The "more complex" coding you speak of,,, is that being used in the various store modules around?  I suppose it is and I could find examples of it there.  Reason for all this line of questioning is that I am working on an idea and will be using the core Repository module when I figure out all the quirks of what I am after.

Once I have a few of these "quirks" figured out, repurposing existing code to make "simpler" module type functions available through the Repository will be a lot of fun for me.

Thanks again,

Clay

John, first I want to thank you for all the input.  It has greatly helped me in my efforts and increased my understanding of the issues of working with DNN in "new" or different ways than it was intended to function, while keeping all the wonderful things that make up DNN.

I have finaly managed to make a form post from a DNN page to a separate page, and allow multiple posts to the same page that way.  Now I have what I think will probably be the last question on this topic before I start to repurpose some DNN functions in interesting ways.

You are using Javascript to rename, then post and then reset the Form on the page in the code above by using a Javascript variable.  Is there a simple way, in Javascript to increment that varialbe on the page?  

In "classic" .asp I used to be able to declare the variable in the page, then declare that it would increment each time found in the page.  Such a way of declaring the "var = " statement you use would be a very simple way of allowing multiple onclick events with different varialbes for the name.

Something like "var = a" then increment it with "var = a+1" so that if I loaded items or data from a database, each time a new record loaded, the variable automatically incremented by "1" so that all of the "forms" had different names.

Is this possible in using Javascript in DNN?  If so, it should be possible to have multiple forms on one page each submitting under a different "from" varaible in the onclick event handler.

Am I correct, and how would that look?

Clay

Hi again John,,,, I have been doing a very dangerous thing,,,,, thinking about all this and I have one, possibly two more questions, depending on your answer.

I see that in the string we are setting the following:

var fa = this.form.action;this.form.target='_blank';this.form.action='https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr';this.form.submit();this.form.action=fa;this.form.target=

What would be wrong with simply adding an additional " this.form.value='(html form inputs here)'; " previuos to the action assignment in the  j a v a s c r i p t and using them as part of the script, removing them from before the script?