eWay Recurring Payment Plugin

Does HikaShop support eWay Recurring Payments. If not, can you point me in the right direction for creating a custom payment plugin.

eWay have sample code for integrating with their API at this address:
www.eway.com.au/Developer/eway-api/recurring-payments.aspx

If I need to create a custom payment method what would be the best approach?

I have never developed a Joommla plugin before however I am going to give it a go. I thought a good place to start would be to understand the Joomla plugin installer. I have copied the existing eway.php, eway_configuration.php and the eway.xml from the plugins\hikashoppayment folder and renamed them to eway_test.

In the xml file I have changed the following tags as shown:
<name>eWay Rebill Payment Plugin</name>
<filename plugin="rebill">eway_test.php</filename>
<filename>eway_test_configuration.php</filename>

Although this does install OK there are some issues which I can't seem to figure out. There are no params registered and the plugin must not install correctly as I cannot uninstall. The following error occurs when I try to uninstall. "Plugin Uninstall: Manifest File invalid or not found"

Also in the Extension Manager there is no version, date or author details despite these tags being unchanged in the xml file.

Thank you to anyone who can assist.

Can you please explain how the back end configuration page is created for hikashoppayment plugins.

The test plugin has now installed OK however the Hikashop plugin options page only displays the eWay specific parameters and without any of the standard Joomla administrator template or standard hikashoppayment plugin parameters. I can see there is an eWay_configuration.php that has the custom parameters but where does the rest come from?

I am fairly confident with editing the eWay.php file to work with the eWay reBill API however I am still not understanding the plugin installation process and how this is registering the parameters.

For example my simple test is as follows:
1. rename eway.php = eway_test.php
2. rename eway_configuration.php = eway_configuration_test.php
3. rename eway.xml = eway_test.xml
4. edit eway_test.xml <files> tags as follows:
<files>
<filename plugin="eway_test">eway_test.php</filename>
<filename>eway_configuration_test.php</filename>
</files>
5. uninstall the current eway plugin
6. install the eway_test plugin
7. go to System->Payment methods in HikaShop and select HikaShop eWAY payment plugin
The 'eWay customer id', 'Debug' and 'Versified status' are not present for configuration. Why are they not available?
8. install the original eway plugin
This one configures fine although if your have both payment methods active the checkout crashes

Can you please help with the installation process? I just don't understand where the params are being registered. Also eventually I will need both the eWay plugin and an eWay reBill plugin active and configurable. Will this be an issue if they use the same params?

I just had a thought. The basic idea behind this will be that only one product uses the reBill option (I understand I need to do this with shipping methods). Would it be easier to just edit the eWay plugin to choose a payment method at run time rather than have two separate payment method plugins? For this to work is it possible to limit the types of products in the cart so that they can not be combined with others?

Sorry about the long post. Thank you for all your help!!!

Sorry just another question. Where is the logic that validates the forms in the checkout?

The reason I ask is that to use the debug option on the eWay plugin you need to use the card number "4444333322221111" which is not a valid card number if you try to use it. Effectively rendering the debug option useless.

Thanks Nicolas, you have been a great help.

You didn't answer my question about debug though. I cannot use the test card number because of validation code on the credit card form. Where is this logic so I may temporarily turn it off?

Lastly what would be the best way to conditionally display terms. For this recurring payment product I would like users to accept terms but I do not want these terms for all other products.

Since we are using the shipping method to determine the payment method it makes sense to me to use the same condition for displaying the terms. Therefore in both the terms.php and the checkout.php I will need to know what shipping method has been selected. Can you please advise how to recall this from the cart in these files.

I have now customised the eWay Payment plugin to support recurring payments and this is working well. There is just one thing that I would like to tidy up for both the normal payment and recurring how easy it will be.

In the standard eWay plugin there is an xml property <ewayCustomerInvoiceRef> which is set to uniqid( "order_" ). Similarly the eWay reBill xml has a property <RebillInvRef>. How hard will it be to set these to the actual Hikashop order number? I understand that the order is not yet created so this may be difficult. Any ideas?

My order number format is J{id size="6"}.

Yes I am happy to share. The only issue here is that it is mostly hard coded rather than with any configuration options. Also I have just customised your existing eWay plugin and added some logic to determine which gateway and xml to use based on the shipping method. As you can see this works in my scenario but is not that flexible.

In any case, I'm sure the source would be very useful for somebody to perhaps reuse some code and possibly improve to include configuration options. I have attached my edited eWay.php payment plugin for those who would like to see.

The hard coded parts are:
1. The condition for determining the gateway is based on shipping_id
2. RebillInitialDate
3. RebillStartDate
4. RebillEndDate
5. RebillInterval
6. RebillIntervalType

OK php files cannot be attached. Try as a text file.