What happens if my server doesn't respond to a WebHook?

[Mc128k]

Hi all

I'm studying how to implement a rather simple payment solution, and seeing that PayPal uses webhooks relieves me, because it makes the database interaction somehow simpler.

Still I can't find on the documentation what actually happens if a request to my callback server fails. As these are payment transactions, it's rather important to keep track of them all, or otherwise to notify an administrator if somehting goes wrong.

Can anyone elaborate how this works? I read that mailchimp has a cool interface that lets you see the failed requests, and keeps them in memory. Does PayPal have that too?

Thanks

[MTS_Jennifer]

Directly from the documentation on Webhooks below is what happens if your endpoint does not respond:

"Important: If your webhook endpoint is unavailable or takes too long to respond, PayPal resends the notification message 25 times over the course of three days until a successful response is given."

Below is the direct link to the Webhook Integration:

Webhook Integration

If you are logged into the PayPal Developer Dashboard there is a section that shows Live Webhook Events. It will show you Webhook Events over the past 30 days.

Thank you,

Jennifer

[gsm4]

@MTS_Jennifer Can you clarify how long "takes too long to respond" is, please? We're having some issues with webhooks, and I strongly suspect the requests are taking too long due to the amount of time it takes for PayPal's sandbox endpoints to respond (we're making calls to verify the webhook). I know it's 10 seconds for Square, but I don't see a specific time in PayPal's docs.

[MTS_Jennifer]

Hi @gsm4 

Thank you for posting to the PayPal Community.

The rule of thumb is between 10-20 seconds. If it takes that amount of time to respond, there's a good chance that the IPN will fail and we will retry sending it again. We retry typically 16 times before we mark the IPN as failed.

Thank you,

Jennifer

MTS

PayPal