Why first_name last_name, why not just name?
Jonzo
I've been curious about this since I started looking into Active
Merchant: Why does ActiveMerchant::Billing::CreditCard require a
first_name and a last_name?
In the main example the following values are used:
.......
:first_name => 'Bob',
:last_name => 'Bobsen'
.......
This person could just as easily have decided that they wanted their
name on their credit card to be "B Bobsen" or they could have chosen
to include their middle name: "Bob Andy Bobsen", "Bob A Bobsen", or
even "B A Bobsen".
All of these combinations are going to be problems when restricting
the user to first_name and last_name. At the very least it's going to
be confusing to the user... Also, I think I noticed somewhere in the
code that the names are joined together when submitting them to a
gateway? Why not just use one field from the start: "name"?
Cody Fauser
Most of the payment gateways require both the first name and last name
provided separately. It is pretty hard to guess with a 3 part name
whether to select 2 names as the first name or 2 names for the last
name. The customer is more likely to be able to put the 2 names into
the correct box.
We've processed many thousands of transactions in Shopify using both
the first and last name and we haven't had any problems that I've
heard of yet.
There are some payment gateways that do take the full name of customer
in one field. In such cases we use the CreditCard#name method that
concatenates the name into a single string.
--
Cody Fauser
http://shopify.com - e-commerce done right
http://www.codyfauser.com - blog
http://peepcode.com/products/activemerchant-pdf - ActiveMerchant PeepCode
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/rjsrails - RJS Templates for Rails
Brendon
card has the name of my company on it. How does that fit into the
firstname lastname scenario? For users to un-naturally split up the
name would require that they understood that your system would be
concatenating the names back together in the background.
I use the PaymentExpress Gateway which only requires a name (single
field) for this it would be nice if I could just specify
CreditCard#name rather than the other two. Is this possible. It's been
a while since I wrote my creditcard stuff but I do recall when I tried
back then it didn't work.
Cheers,
Brendon
On Feb 8, 3:37 pm, "Cody Fauser" <codyfau...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Jonzo,
>
> Most of the payment gateways require both thefirstnameandlastname
> provided separately. It is pretty hard to guess with a 3 partname
>
> We've processed many thousands of transactions in Shopify using both
> heard of yet.
>
> There are some payment gateways that do take the fullnameof customer
> On 2/6/08, Jonzo <j.fant...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi,
>
> > I've been curious about this since I started looking into Active
> > Merchant: Why does ActiveMerchant::Billing::CreditCard require a
> > first_name and a last_name?
>
> > In the main example the following values are used:
> > .......
> > :first_name => 'Bob',
> > :last_name => 'Bobsen'
> > .......
>
> > This person could just as easily have decided that they wanted their
> > to include their middlename: "Bob Andy Bobsen", "Bob A Bobsen", or
Thijs van der Vossen
> Hi Jonzo, that's not overly helpful. For instance, by business credit
> card has the name of my company on it. How does that fit into the
> firstname lastname scenario? For users to un-naturally split up the
> name would require that they understood that your system would be
> concatenating the names back together in the background.
>
> I use the PaymentExpress Gateway which only requires a name (single
> field) for this it would be nice if I could just specify
> CreditCard#name rather than the other two. Is this possible. It's been
> a while since I wrote my creditcard stuff but I do recall when I tried
> back then it didn't work.
Using your own CreditCard subclass is a nice way to do this. See http://pastie.caboo.se/174477
for an example of what we're currently using.
Even though the separate first and last name doesn't seem to make
sense it is required by a lot of gateways including Authorize.net
Kind regards,
Thijs
--
Fingertips - http://www.fngtps.com
David J
>> This person could just as easily have decided that they wanted their
>> to include their middle name: "Bob Andy Bobsen", "Bob A Bobsen", or
name on their card. It's just another field someone has to fill out
and if your gateway doesn't need it, why do we have to force the user
to break it up?
The more I think about it, maybe none of us are wrong. It seems to be
down to the requirements of the gateway your using. Maybe there is
something we define in the gateaway which then changes the way the
credit card validates.
In the case of PaymentExpress, just having a name field is clearly
better, and in the case of other gateways having it broken up is
better.
Is there is solution we can come up with that doesn't require you to
extend the CreditCard class? Maybe just a simple option that is set on
the gateway that disables validation on the last name?
For a temporary solution, just comment out this line
"errors.add :last_name, "cannot be empty" if @last_name.blank?" in the
validate_essential_attributes() method in /lib/active_merchant/billing/
credit_card.rb file. That will shut up the last name errors.
On Apr 3, 7:51 pm, Thijs van der Vossen <t.vandervos...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> > Hi Jonzo, that's not overly helpful. For instance, by business credit
> > card has the name of my company on it. How does that fit into the
> > firstname lastname scenario? For users to un-naturally split up the
> > name would require that they understood that your system would be
> > concatenating the names back together in the background.
>
> > I use the PaymentExpress Gateway which only requires a name (single
> > field) for this it would be nice if I could just specify
> > CreditCard#name rather than the other two. Is this possible. It's been
> > a while since I wrote my creditcard stuff but I do recall when I tried
> > back then it didn't work.
>
Jonzo
Isn't the best practice to design for the situation that is correct?
and then adapt for incorrect situations such as Authorize.net?
Or better yet, put in a conditional switch. First check for :name,
then if that doesn't exist look for :first_name, and :last_name.
My solution was to edit the plugin myself like David J suggests, so
that it worked correctly with my gateway. That works fine so far :-)
Cody Fauser
sense and is the nicest solution, but many of the gateways require the
name in its individual components.
We could also add a name= method to the CreditCard class that splits
the single name into the first_name and last_name components, but also
stores the full name in case the gateway can use it.
def name=(value)
return if value.blank?
@name = value
segments = value.split(' ')
@last_name = segments.pop
@first_name = segments.join(' ')
end
def name
@name ||= "#{first_name} #{last_name}"
end
This way if the gateway supports a single name field and you've set
the name using name= then the entire name would be passed to the
gateway unaltered.
Comments?
--
Benjamin Curtis
I've done this very thing in a few projects.
----
Benjamin Curtis
http://railskits.com/ - Ready-made Rails code
http://catchthebest.com/ - Team-powered recruiting
http://www.bencurtis.com/ - Personal blog
patrick...@gmail.com
On May 13, 9:26 am, Benjamin Curtis <benjamin.cur...@gmail.com> wrote:
> +1
>
> I've done this very thing in a few projects.
>
> ----
> On May 13, 2008, at 6:22 AM, Cody Fauser wrote:
>
>
>
> > I agree that only asking for the entire name definitely makes the most
> > sense and is the nicest solution, but many of the gateways require the
> > name in its individual components.
>
> > We could also add a name= method to the CreditCard class that splits
> > the single name into the first_name and last_name components, but also
> > stores the full name in case the gateway can use it.
>
> > def name=(value)
> > return if value.blank?
>
> > @name = value
> > segments = value.split(' ')
> > @last_name = segments.pop
> > @first_name = segments.join(' ')
> > end
>
> > def name
> > @name ||= "#{first_name} #{last_name}"
> > end
>
> > This way if the gateway supports a single name field and you've set
> > the name using name= then the entire name would be passed to the
> > gateway unaltered.
>
> > Comments?
>
Jonathan Fantham
--
Jonathan
Cody Fauser
--
Cody Fauser
> ----
> Benjamin Curtis
> http://railskits.com/ - Ready-made Rails code
> http://catchthebest.com/ - Team-powered recruiting
> http://www.bencurtis.com/ - Personal blog
>
>
>
> On May 14, 2008, at 3:30 AM, Cody Fauser wrote:
>>
>> Anyone want to whip up a patch?
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
--
Benjamin Curtis
online. :)
----
Benjamin Curtis
http://railskits.com/ - Ready-made Rails code
http://catchthebest.com/ - Team-powered recruiting
http://www.bencurtis.com/ - Personal blog
Cody Fauser
On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 3:37 PM, Benjamin Curtis
<benjami...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Heh, we should definitely call her agent and ask how she orders stuff
> online. :)
>
> ----
> Benjamin Curtis
> http://railskits.com/ - Ready-made Rails code
> http://catchthebest.com/ - Team-powered recruiting
> http://www.bencurtis.com/ - Personal blog
>
>
>
> On May 15, 2008, at 12:13 PM, Cody Fauser wrote:
>>
>> Madonna ;)
>>
>> On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 12:41 PM, Benjamin Curtis
>> <benjami...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Is this too naïve? It will fail if someone has no space in the name
>>> on their card, but I don't know whether that happens.
>>>
>>>>
>
> >
>
--
Damien McKenna
> Heh, we should definitely call her agent and ask how she orders stuff
> online. :)
first_name: "Mrs"
last_name: "Ritchie"
--
Damien McKenna - Husband, father, geek.
dam...@mc-kenna.com - http://www.mc-kenna.com/
Brendon
Cheers,
Brendon
On May 14, 10:30 pm, "Cody Fauser" <codyfau...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyone want to whip up a patch?
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 4:08 PM, Jonathan Fantham <j.fant...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > sounds good :-)
>
> > <patrick.t.jo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Sounds like a good compromise to me.
>
> > > On May 13, 9:26 am, Benjamin Curtis <benjamin.cur...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > +1
>
> > > > I've done this very thing in a few projects.
>
> > > > ----
> > > > >http://www.codyfauser.com-blog
> > > > >http://peepcode.com/products/activemerchant-pdf-ActiveMerchant
> > > > > PeepCode
> > > > >http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/rjsrails-RJS Templates for Rails
>
> > --
> > Jonathan
>
> --
> Cody Fauserhttp://shopify.com- e-commerce done righthttp://www.codyfauser.com- bloghttp://peepcode.com/products/activemerchant-pdf- ActiveMerchant PeepCodehttp://www.oreilly.com/catalog/rjsrails- RJS Templates for Rails