In the first part of this series, we created a Django online shop with htmx.

In this second part, we'll handle orders using Stripe.

What We'll Do

We'll integrate Stripe to handle payments securely. This is what we want to achieve:

1. In the purchase view, we start by creating a Stripe checkout session and redirect the customer to the corresponding URL. This is where we tell Stripe about the product we are selling, its quantity, and where the customer should be redirected to after a successful purchase (the success_url).
2. The customer fills in their payment details on the Stripe checkout page and completes the payment. Stripe then makes a POST request to a webhook endpoint on our website, where we listen to events and process them accordingly. If the payment is successful, we save the order in our database and notify the customer (and our staff users) about the purchase.
3. Finally, if the webhook returns a response with a 200 OK HTTP status code, Stripe redirects to the success_url created in the first step.

Setting Up Stripe for Our Django Python Store

We first need to jump over to Stripe and do the following:

1. Create a Stripe account.
2. Create a product (with a payment id).
3. Create a webhook.

1: Create a Stripe Account

Start by creating a Stripe account. For now, you don’t really need to activate your account. You can just work in test mode, which will prevent you from making real payments while testing. Go to the API keys page and retrieve the publishable and secret keys. Save them in your project environment variables (STRIPE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY and STRIPE_SECRET_KEY). We will use these keys to authenticate your Stripe requests.

2: Create Your Product

Create a new product on the products page. Fill out the details and set the payment type to one-off. Your product should look something like this:

Once you press Add product, you should be able to see your product on the product list. If you click on it and scroll down to the Pricing section, you can find the API ID for the price item you created — it should be something like price_3ODP5…. Save it in an environment variable (STRIPE_PRICE_ID): you will need this when creating the Stripe checkout session.

3: Create the Webhook

We need to create a webhook endpoint for Stripe to call when a payment completes. In the webhooks page, choose to test in the local environment. This will allow you to forward the request to a local URL, like http://127.0.0.1:8000. Start by downloading the Stripe CLI. Then, you can:

1. Log into Stripe

stripe login

2. Forward events to the webhook endpoint that you will create:

stripe listen --forward-to http://127.0.0.1:8000/webhook
> Ready! Your webhook signing secret is whsec_06531a7ba22363ac038f284ac547906b89e5c939f8d55dfd03a3619f9adc590a (^C to quit)

This ensures that once a purchase is made, Stripe forwards the webhook calls to your local endpoint. The command will log a webhook signing secret, which you should also save as a project environment variable (STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET). This will prove useful for verifying that a request does indeed come from Stripe and that you are handling the right webhook.

By the end of this section, you should have four Stripe environment variables. You can now load them in ecommerce_site/settings.py:

# ecommerce_site/settings.py
 
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv
load_dotenv()
 
STRIPE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY = os.environ.get("STRIPE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY")
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY = os.environ.get("STRIPE_SECRET_KEY")
STRIPE_PRICE_ID = os.environ.get("STRIPE_PRICE_ID")
STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET = os.environ.get("STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET")

Note: We are using python-dotenv to load the environment variables.

Extend the Views

We now need to extend the views to integrate Stripe by creating a checkout session, a successful purchase view, and a webhook view.

1: Create a Stripe Checkout Session

In the purchase view, we'll create a Stripe checkout session if the purchase form is valid:

# ecommerce/views.py
from django_htmx import HttpResponseClientRedirect
from django.conf import settings
import stripe
 
@require_POST
def purchase(request):
    form = OrderForm(request.POST)
    if form.is_valid():
        quantity = form.cleaned_data["quantity"]
 
        # replace time.sleep(2) with the following code ⬇️
 
        # 1 - set stripe api key
        stripe.api_key = settings.STRIPE_SECRET_KEY
 
        # 2 - create success url
        success_url = (
            request.build_absolute_uri(
                reverse("purchase_success")
            )
            + "?session_id={CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID}"
        )
 
        # 3 - create cancel url
        cancel_url = request.build_absolute_uri(reverse("home"))
 
        # 4 - create checkout session
        checkout_session = stripe.checkout.Session.create(
            line_items=[
                {
                    "price": settings.STRIPE_PRICE_ID,
                    "quantity": quantity,
                }
            ],
            mode="payment",
            success_url=success_url,
            cancel_url=cancel_url
        )
 
        # 5 - redirect to checkout session url
        return HttpResponseClientRedirect(checkout_session.url)
    return render(request, "product.html", {"form": form})

Let’s break this down:

1. We first set the Stripe API key.
2. We then create a successful purchase URL pointing to the purchase_success view (which we'll create in the next step). Stripe should automatically populate the CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID.
3. We create a URL for when a purchase is canceled — for example, when the customer changes their mind. In this case, it’s just the home view.
4. We create a Stripe checkout session with our price ID (the product identifier) and the quantity the customer wants to purchase.
5. Stripe returns a session object from which we can extract the URL and redirect the customer. Since this request is coming from htmx, we can’t really use the standard Django redirect function. Instead, we use the django-htmx package, which provides this HttpResponseClientRedirect class.

2: Create the Successful Purchase View

After completing the purchase, Stripe will redirect the customer to our specified success_url. Here, we can handle the post-purchase logic:

from django.shortcuts import redirect
 
def purchase_success(request):
    session_id = request.GET.get("session_id")
    if session_id is None:
	      return redirect("home")
 
    stripe.api_key = settings.STRIPE_SECRET_KEY
    try:
        stripe.checkout.Session.retrieve(session_id)
    except stripe.error.InvalidRequestError:
        messages.error(request, "There was a problem while buying your product. Please try again.")
        return redirect("home")
    return render(request, "purchase_success.html")

In this view, we first check if the session_id query parameter is present. If it is, we retrieve the corresponding session from Stripe using the secret key and the session_id. We then render the successful purchase template, which looks like this:

# ecommerce/templates/purchase_success.html {% extends "base.html" %} {% block
content %}
<section>
  <header>
    <h2>Thank you for your purchase</h2>
    <p>
      Your purchase was successful. You will receive an email with the details
      of your purchase soon.
    </p>
  </header>
</section>
{% endblock %}

You should also add it to the urlpatterns:

# ecommerce_site/urls.py
 
# ... same imports as before
 
urlpatterns = [
    # ... same urls as before
    path("purchase_success", views.purchase_success, name="purchase_success"),  # ⬅️ new
]

3: Create the Webhook View

While the customer is in the purchase process, and before they are redirected to the success view, Stripe will call our webhook endpoint (remember to have the webhook listener running, as explained in the earlier 'Create the Webhook' section of this post):

from django.views.decorators.csrf import csrf_exempt
from django.http import HttpResponse
 
@csrf_exempt
def webhook(request):
    stripe.api_key = settings.STRIPE_SECRET_KEY
    sig_header = request.headers.get('stripe-signature')
    payload = request.body
    event = None
    try:
            event = stripe.Webhook.construct_event(
                payload, sig_header, settings.STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET
            )
    except stripe.error.SignatureVerificationError:
        # Invalid signature
        return HttpResponse(status=400)
 
    # Handle the checkout.session.completed event
    if event.type == "checkout.session.completed":
        # TODO: create line orders
        return HttpResponse(status=200)
    return HttpResponse(status=400)

Let’s break this down:

• We try to construct a Stripe event from the payload, the signature header, and the webhook secret: the first is used to build the actual event, and the last two variables are relevant to validate the authenticity of the request.
• If the signature verification fails, we return a 400 HTTP response. Remember that Stripe is actually calling this endpoint, not our customer, so Stripe will know what to do in this scenario.
• We check if the event type is checkout.session.completed, i.e., if a customer successfully paid for our product. For now, we don’t do much else here, but we will process the order in the next step.

Note: A Stripe event can have multiple types but we will only handle completed sessions in this post. However, you can (and should) extend a webhook by following the docs.

You should also add this view to urlpatterns:

# ecommerce_site/urls.py
 
# ... same imports as before
 
urlpatterns = [
    # ... same urls as before
    path("webhook", views.webhook, name="webhook"),  # ⬅️ new
]

If everything works well, once you click “buy”, you should be redirected to a Stripe payment page. Since we are in test mode, we can fill in the payment details with dummy data, like a 4242 4242 4242 4242 card:

Once you press Pay, Stripe should call the webhook view and redirect you to the purchase_success view. Congratulations, you have successfully processed a payment with Stripe!

Create the Orders and Notify Users

Once a purchase is completed, we need to do a few things in the webhook view:

• Save the order information in our database.
• Notify staff users about the recent purchase.
• Send a confirmation email to the customer.

Let’s create a LineOrder database model in ecommerce/models.py to store some of the order information:

# ecommerce/models.py
 
from django.db import models
 
class LineOrder(models.Model):
    quantity = models.IntegerField()
    name = models.CharField(max_length=255, null=True, blank=True)
    email = models.EmailField(null=True, blank=True)
    shipping_details = models.TextField(null=True, blank=True)
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
 
    def __str__(self):
        return f"Order {self.id} - {self.quantity} units"

Remember to create and run the migrations:

python manage.py makemigrations # ⬅️ creates the migration files
python manage.py migrate # ⬅️ applies the migrations in the database

We can now create a function to process the orders and call it from the webhook view:

# ecommerce/views.py
 
@csrf_exempt
def webhook(request):
	# ...same code as before
		if event.type == "checkout.session.completed":
            create_line_orders(event.data.object) # ⬅️ new
		    return HttpResponse(status=200)
        return HttpResponse(status=400)
 
# new ⬇️
def create_line_orders(session: stripe.checkout.Session):
    line_items = stripe.checkout.Session.list_line_items(session.id)
    for line_item in line_items.data:
        LineOrder.objects.create(
            name=session.customer_details.name,
            email=session.customer_details.email,
            shipping_details=session.shipping_details,
            quantity=line_item.quantity,
        )
    mail.send_mail(
        "Your order has been placed",
        f"""
        Hi {session.customer_details.name},
        Your order has been placed. Thank you for shopping with us!
        You will receive an email with tracking information shortly.
 
        Best,
        The one product e-commerce Team
        """,
        "from@example.com",
        [session.customer_details.email],
    )
 
	staff_users = User.objects.filter(is_staff=True)
    mail.send_mail(
        "You have a new order!",
        """
            Hi team!
            You have a new order in your shop! go to the admin page to see it.
 
            Best,
            The one product e-commerce Team
            """,
        "from@example.com",
        [user.email for user in staff_users],
    )

Let’s break this down:

• We first create line order instances from the Stripe session and send a confirmation email to the customer about their purchase.
• We then send an email to all staff users telling them to check the admin panel.

You can now register the LineOrder model in the admin panel, so it’s accessible to staff users:

# ecommerce/admin.py
from django.contrib import admin
from ecommerce.models import LineOrder
 
# Register your models here.
admin.site.register(LineOrder)

When staff users log in to the admin page, they will now be able to check new orders and process them accordingly — in this case, pack and ship mugs to the customer!

Some Tips to Optimize Your Django Store

Here are some tips to further improve on the store you've built:

• Write tests - you can see some examples in the GitHub repository.
• If you have more products to sell, create a database model for them, and connect the LineOrder through a ForeignKey.
• Configure email settings according to Django's email documentation. You can also use libraries such as django-post-office to manage your email templates and queues.
• Once you deploy your website, create an actual webhook (not a local listener).
• Take a look at the Stripe docs for alternatives to the checkout process we've outlined, including an embedded checkout form.

Wrapping Up

In this two-part series, we successfully built a one-product e-commerce site using Django, htmx, and Stripe. This guide has walked you through setting up your Django project, integrating htmx for seamless user interactions, and incorporating secure payments with Stripe.

We also covered how to handle order processing, including saving order information to your database, notifying staff users of new purchases, and sending confirmation emails to your customers. With these foundations, you can further customize and expand your e-commerce site to suit your specific needs.

Happy coding!

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