PayPal IPN Listener

A Node.js and MongoDB based listener for PayPal IPN events.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

The following will need to be installed before proceeding:

• Node v12+
• MongoDB
• Nginx

Clone the Project

# Clone it
git clone https://github.com/Fairbanks-io/PayPal-IPN-Listener.git
cd PayPal-IPN-Listener/

Run the Listener

# Install Dependencies
npm install

# Start Server
npm start

The IPN listener should now be running on http://localhost:8888

Docker

This IPN Listener is also available on Dockerhub.

To launch the Dockerfile, the following can be used as an example:

docker run -d -p 8888:8888 -e 'MONGO_URI=mongodb://user:password@localhost:27018/paypal' --restart unless-stopped --name 'paypal-ipn' fairbanksio/paypal-ipn-listener

The IPN listener should now be running on http://localhost:8888

If you need to get into the container for some reason, simply run the following on the Docker host:

docker exec -it paypal-ipn /bin/bash

Environment Variables

ENV	Required?	Details	Example
MONGO_URI	No	What Mongo instance to use. If the ENV is not provided, mongodb://localhost/paypal is used.	mongodb://user:password@localhost:27018/paypal
LOG_LOCATION	No	Override where the IPN log is written. By default the log is written into the app directory.	/Logs/ipn.log
PORT	No	Override the application port. Defaults to 8888.	8889

Configure Nginx

PayPal requires that your IPN Listener be hosted on an HTTPS enabled domain. To achieve both of those, you can use an Nginx reverse proxy with the following configuration:

server {
    if ($host = ipn.mysite.io) {
        return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
    }
    listen 80;
    server_name ipn.mysite.io;
    return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    ssl on;
    ssl_certificate fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key privkey.pem;
    server_name ipn.mysite.io;
    add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
    large_client_header_buffers 4 8k;
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8888;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
    }
}

The IPN listener should now be available on the URL configured when setting up Nginx. To complete setup, update your IPN url on PayPal and run a test payment with the IPN Simulator.