Cannot retrieve payments

[disconnectme]

I'm trying to write a script to tell how much people have donated for a software project. When I look in the paypal account, there are plenty of donations, but the API is returning an empty result when I request the payment list. Here's the script:

!/usr/bin/env python

import httplib2
import logging
import paypalrestsdk
import sys

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)
httplib2.debuglevel = 1

print sys.argv

mode = sys.argv[1]
client_id = sys.argv[2]
client_secret = sys.argv[3]

paypalrestsdk.configure(mode=mode, client_id=client_id, client_secret=client_secret)

history = paypalrestsdk.Payment.all({"count": 10})
print history

Here's the output:
INFO:root:Request[POST]: https://api.paypal.com/v1/oauth2/token
INFO:root:Response[200]: OK, Duration: 0.940779s
INFO:root:Request[GET]: https://api.paypal.com/v1/payments/payment?count=10
INFO:root:Response[200]: OK, Duration: 0.921905s
connect: (api.paypal.com, 443)
send: 'POST /v1/oauth2/token HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: api.paypal.com\r\nContent-Length: 29\r\naccept-encoding: gzip, deflate\r\nauthorization: Basic xyz\r\naccept: application/json\r\nuser-agent: PayPalSDK/rest-sdk-python 0.5.3 (httplib2 0.8; python 2.7.2)\r\n\r\ngrant_type=client_credentials'
reply: 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n'
header: Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
header: Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 22:36:46 GMT
header: Content-Type: application/json
header: Transfer-Encoding: chunked
connect: (api.paypal.com, 443)
send: 'GET /v1/payments/payment?count=10 HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: api.paypal.com\r\naccept-encoding: gzip, deflate\r\ncontent-type: application/json\r\naccept: application/json\r\nauthorization: Bearer xxx\r\nuser-agent: PayPalSDK/rest-sdk-python 0.5.3 (httplib2 0.8; python 2.7.2)\r\n\r\n'
reply: 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n'
header: Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
header: Date: Thu, 16 May 2013 22:36:47 GMT
header: PayPal-Debug-Id: e63eb1d8d07c1
header: Content-Type: application/json
header: Content-Length: 11
{u'count': 0}

[siddick]

Payment.all only list the payments that are created using Payment.create api call.

[disconnectme]

Is there anything to list all the payments, not just the ones created using Payment.create?

[siddick]

Refer #12 (comment)

[johnpfeifer4]

I'm looking for the same feature and it sounds like you are telling us to use the old API's?

[sobelito]

I had the same issue where I could not pull donations or payments made via email from REST API. Empty result each time. Started to use the Merchant API, but.. the classic paypal APP signup was way too verbose, ... #NotFun

[avidas]

That is still the case that Payment.all only list the payments that are created using Payment.create i.e. payments created using REST APIs. Merchant API TransactionSearch or your merchant dashboard after you login would have other payments made using classic APIs.

[johnpfeifer4]

This really sucks. Seems that these API's reflect some serious flaws in what's happening behind the scenes. I'm not quite sure how you can convince people to go all-in with the REST API's when they don't show all historical transactions.

[johnpfeifer4]

I've been stuck using the TransactionSearch service which is pretty painful. This is 2015, tooling exists to codegen and easily consume RESTful and SOAP based services... Not these goofy NVP API's :(

[hakanb]

@johnpfeifer4 Check out https://github.com/gtaylor/paypal-python for a less painful way to use TransactionSearch. Example usage is available here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/23122397/378638

[pjrobertson]

I think this issue should be re-opened until the documentation is fixed. See: https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/api/#list-payment-resources

This is very misleading, and should really be "use this call to get a list of payments created by the Payment.create API call in any state..."
I wonder how many thousands of dev hours have been lost because of poor documentation...

List payment resources

Operation

GET /v1/payments/payment/

Use this call to get a list of payments in any state (created, approved, failed, etc.). The payments returned are the payments made to the merchant making the call.

Request

PayPal offers query parameters and pagination to help filter results.

[bluk]

For internal book-keeping, DEVDOC-406 was opened for this.

[bluk]

@pjrobertson The REST API reference documentation beta was updated to explicitly call out that the payments listed are only for those created by Payment.create:

Use this call to list payments in any state, such as created, approved, and failed, that were created by the Payment.create call. The payments returned are the payments made to the merchant making the call.

https://developer.paypal.com/docs/rest/api/payments/#payment.list (the beta label will be removed in the near future). Thanks for your feedback.

[pjrobertson]

Great! Thanks for your work :)

[InteXX]

I'm casting my vote for the ability to search for and locate ANY transaction via the REST API (and the .NET SDK), not just those created by an API.

In other words, the REST API (and the .NET SDK) should be able to locate transactions that were created manually via the website user interface. A returned list of merely API-created transactions (any API) is simply not sufficient—manually-created transactions should be included as well.

This is a very serious issue. I haven't seen discussion regarding the problem that's dated newer than over a year ago, so I hope attention to it hasn't waned.

Thanks,
Jeff Bowman
Fairbanks, Alaska

[braebot]

@InteXX, I totally agree. Would you mind creating a new issue for a new 'transaction search' API?

[InteXX]

@braebot: Sure thing, no problem. I'm using .NET, so I posted it here (hope you don't mind ;-)

[braebot]

Thanks @InteXX!

[InteXX]

@braebot: YW :-)