Paypal v2 PHP curl Capture Order

Question

My curl seems to be malformed or the header is missing some elements when I try to run it with PHP.

I have run this curl successfully in Postman:

curl -v -X POST https://api-m.paypal.com/v2/checkout/orders/MyOrderId/capture \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer MyToken" \
-H "PayPal-Request-Id: MyRequestId" \
-H "Prefer: return=representation" \
-H "PayPal-Client-Metadata-Id: MyMetaDataId"

But when I want to run it in PHP, it tells me the header is missing information.

Here is the PHP code:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

require_once 'generateAccessToken.php';

$orderID = $_GET['orderID'] ?? '';

if (empty($orderID)) {
    http_response_code(400);
    echo json_encode(['error' => 'Missing order ID']);
    exit;
}

$accessToken = generateAccessToken();
if (empty($accessToken)) {
    http_response_code(500);
    echo json_encode(['error' => 'Failed to obtain access token']);
    exit;
}

$url = "https://api-m.paypal.com/v2/checkout/orders/{$orderID}/capture";

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
  CURLOPT_URL => $url,
  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
  CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
  CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
  CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
  CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
  CURLOPT_POST => true,
  CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
    "Authorization: Bearer " . $accessToken,
    "Content-Type: application/json",
    "PayPal-Request-Id: " . uniqid(),
    "Prefer: return=representation",
    "PayPal-Client-Metadata-Id: " . time() . "-" . $orderID
  ),
));

$response = curl_exec($curl);
$httpStatusCode = curl_getinfo($curl, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
$curlError = curl_error($curl);

curl_close($curl);

if ($curlError) {
    echo json_encode(['error' => 'cURL Error: ' . $curlError]);
    exit;
}

if ($response === false) {
    http_response_code(500);
    echo json_encode(['error' => 'Failed to capture order. No response data from PayPal.']);
    exit;
}

$responseData = json_decode($response, true);

if (!$responseData) {
    http_response_code(500);
    echo json_encode(['error' => 'Failed to capture order. Invalid JSON response.']);
    exit;
}

if (isset($responseData['id']) && isset($responseData['status']) && $responseData['status'] == 'COMPLETED') {
    echo json_encode(['success' => true, 'id' => $responseData['id'], 'status' => $responseData['status']]);
} else {
    http_response_code($httpStatusCode);
    echo json_encode(['error' => 'Failed to capture order.', 'details' => $responseData]);
}
?>

Here is the error I'm getting:

HTTP/1.1 400 Invalid Request Connection: close Content-Length: 28 content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 x-served-by: cache-lon420138 broken content-length header

Answer 1

I actually fixed the problem lol. I took the

    curl -v -X POST https://api-m.paypal.com/v2/checkout/orders/MyOrderId/capture
-H "Content-Type: application/json"
-H "Authorization: Bearer MyToken"
-H "PayPal-Request-Id: MyRequestId"
-H "Prefer: return=representation"
-H "PayPal-Client-Metadata-Id: MyMetaDataId"

command, I posted it in postman, and I converted it to PHP -cURL, and I took that whole command, and I ran it, and I eventually got a success!!!

Here is how the source code looks:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);

require_once 'generateAccessToken.php';

$orderID = $_GET['orderID'] ?? '';

if (empty($orderID)) {
    http_response_code(400);
    echo json_encode(['error' => 'Missing order ID']);
    exit;
}

$accessToken = generateAccessToken();
if (empty($accessToken)) {
    http_response_code(500);
    echo json_encode(['error' => 'Failed to obtain access token']);
    exit;
}

$url = "https://api-m.paypal.com/v2/checkout/orders/{$orderID}/capture";
$requestId = uniqid();
$uniqueOrderID = $orderID; // This should ideally come from your order system.
$paypalClientMetadataId = time() . "-" . $uniqueOrderID;

$curl = curl_init();

curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
  CURLOPT_URL => $url,
  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
  CURLOPT_ENCODING => '',
  CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
  CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 0,
  CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => true,
  CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
  CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => 'POST',
  CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
    'Content-Type: application/json',
    'Authorization: Bearer '.$accessToken,
    'PayPal-Request-Id: '.$requestId,
    'Prefer: return=representation',
    'PayPal-Client-Metadata-Id: '.$paypalClientMetadataId
  ),
));

$response = curl_exec($curl);

curl_close($curl);


if ($response === false) {
    http_response_code(500);
    echo json_encode(['error' => 'Failed to capture order. No response data from PayPal.']);
    exit;
}

$responseData = json_decode($response, true);

if (!$responseData) {
    http_response_code(500);
    echo json_encode(['error' => 'Failed to capture order. Invalid JSON response.']);
    exit;
}

if (isset($responseData['id']) && isset($responseData['status']) && $responseData['status'] == 'COMPLETED') {
    echo json_encode(['success' => true, 'id' => $responseData['id'], 'status' => $responseData['status']]);
} else {
    http_response_code($httpStatusCode);
    echo json_encode(['error' => 'Failed to capture order.', 'details' => $responseData]);
}
?>