Integrations: Return vs Notification

[Michael Noack]

I'm looking at contributing the NAB Transact Direct Post Integration for Active Merchant (not to be confused with the NAB Transact XML Gateway which has already been contributed to Active Merchant)


Integrations aren't the most up-to-date and well documented of things and it seems in most Integrations people are using Notification's

But there's a Return class used by some as well and they seem similar.

What is the difference? Is one to represent the users browser being "returned" to your site with some params, and notification representing the gateway "notifying" your server directly? From experience most/all gateways seem to return the user to a URL and some also send a message direct to your server.

Some gateways (e.g. 2checkout) don't seem to be doing it this way, e.g. 2checkout has a notification class but that is a integration where the user is redirected back.



Thank You

[Nathaniel Talbott]

So your distinction is correct: a Return represents the customer's browser having been "returned" to your site, and a Notification represents a callback "notification" from the gateway directly to your app.

There are two reasons ActiveMerchant support both:

1) Some gateways only do one OR the other, not both. So we need to support both modes of communication.

2) Even when both are supported, the Return provides more immediacy but is less reliable. Notifications are potentially delayed, but delivery is (or at least should be) guaranteed.

So if a gateway supports both, it's generally advisable to implement both.

--
Nathaniel

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[Michael Noack]

We haven't had the time, but if anyone wants to contribute a NAB Transact Direct Post gateway to ActiveMerchant we've done a lot of the base work in our own system.
The relevant tests/classes are at https://gist.github.com/mnoack/5bc984e99b10b37d37a3