Subscription based payments
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Jason Onoda
Jan 28, 2017, 8:12:22 PM1/28/17
to General Open edX discussion
I've been trying to determine the feasibility of adding a subscription based payment for my instance of the edx platform. Poking around on #ecommerce in the slack group, and was suggested by Toby of modifying the enrollment or login portion of the edx platform to also tie with a subscription flag with a payment processing service (e.g. stripe or paypal). Before I start diving into the rabbit hole, I was wondering if anyone else has implemented something similar to this?
s.mo...@raccoongang.com
Feb 1, 2017, 5:13:09 PM2/1/17
to General Open edX discussion
not to our knowledge. And you're right thinking that this task involves not only payment module, but with enrollments or login.
when we were thinking on implementing such a thing we had 3 options to go:
1. make access to the courses depended on subscription status. i.e. student can only see courseware when subscription is active. Changes to Open edX core is needed and this use case is only valid when all courses are available via subscription and there is no way to buy individual course.
2. enroll a student into ALL courses upon buying a subscription, unenroll from ALL courses when subscription ends. This allows to keep business logic out of enrollment code and do everything via API. No changes to Open edX core. Works well with individually purchased courses. In this usecase hiding "all courses" page seems like a good idea as when a student is enrolled in all courses the content of "all courses" and "my courses" is identical.
3. mark a student as "paid" and check this status when enrolling. yet you still need to unenroll the student from courses, when subscription ends.
So we implemented #1 (the customer usecase didn't require actual payment, or better to say he managed this outside of Open edX) as well assisted with implementing #2 for another customer (he added needed API calls to his .NET portal which manages users).
#3 doesn't look like a viable option to us - too complex, no real advantages compared to #1 & #2.
Hope this helps a bit. Let the community know on your progress when you're done :)
when we were thinking on implementing such a thing we had 3 options to go:
1. make access to the courses depended on subscription status. i.e. student can only see courseware when subscription is active. Changes to Open edX core is needed and this use case is only valid when all courses are available via subscription and there is no way to buy individual course.
2. enroll a student into ALL courses upon buying a subscription, unenroll from ALL courses when subscription ends. This allows to keep business logic out of enrollment code and do everything via API. No changes to Open edX core. Works well with individually purchased courses. In this usecase hiding "all courses" page seems like a good idea as when a student is enrolled in all courses the content of "all courses" and "my courses" is identical.
3. mark a student as "paid" and check this status when enrolling. yet you still need to unenroll the student from courses, when subscription ends.
So we implemented #1 (the customer usecase didn't require actual payment, or better to say he managed this outside of Open edX) as well assisted with implementing #2 for another customer (he added needed API calls to his .NET portal which manages users).
#3 doesn't look like a viable option to us - too complex, no real advantages compared to #1 & #2.
Hope this helps a bit. Let the community know on your progress when you're done :)
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