Connecting Stripe Connect to Your Laravel Application: Part 1

Welcome! Today, we’ll dive into the process of seamlessly integrating Stripe Connect into your Laravel application. Stripe Connect offers a robust platform for handling payments, managing connected accounts, and facilitating transactions, making it an ideal choice for businesses looking to scale their operations. In this series, we’ll explore the step-by-step implementation of Stripe Connect within a Laravel environment.

1. Introduction

Before we dive into the technical details, let’s briefly outline what Stripe Connect is and why it’s advantageous for Laravel developers. Stripe Connect serves as a comprehensive solution for building marketplace platforms, subscription services, and on-demand businesses.

2. Installation

To begin, we need to set up our Laravel environment to work seamlessly with Stripe Connect. This involves installing two essential packages: Laravel Cashier and Laravel Cashier Stripe Connect.

1. Enable Stripe Connect in your dashboard settings.
2. Install Cashier: composer require laravel/cashier.
3. Install package: composer require lanos/laravel-cashier-stripe-connect.
4. Publish migrations php artisan vendor:publish --tag=cashier-connect-migrations.
5. Run migrations: php artisan migrate.

3. Configuring Entities

In our Laravel application, we’ll model two key entities: Workspace and WorkspaceUser. Think of Workspace as representing a Stripe Account and WorkspaceUser as a Stripe Customer. By aligning our application’s entities with Stripe’s data model, we can seamlessly synchronize data and perform operations with ease.

use Lanos\CashierConnect\Billable as ConnectBillable;

class Workspace extends Model implements StripeAccount
{
    use ConnectBillable;

    public function stripeAccountEmail(): string
    {
        return ''; // Implement logic to retrieve email associated with the account
    }
}

use Lanos\CashierConnect\ConnectCustomer;

class WorkspaceUser extends Model implements Customer
{
    use ConnectCustomer;
}

By incorporating traits provided by Laravel Cashier Stripe Connect, we equip our entities with the necessary functionality to interact with Stripe Connect seamlessly.

4. Onboarding Functionality

Before we can initiate transactions or subscriptions, we need to ensure that each Workspace has a corresponding Stripe Account. To facilitate this, we’ll implement an onboarding feature that guides users through the process of setting up their Stripe Account.

public function generateOnboardingURL(Request $request, Workspace $workspace)
{
    if (!$workspace->hasStripeAccount()) {
        $workspace->createAsStripeAccount('standard');
    }

    return response()->json([
        'url' => $workspace->accountOnboardingUrl(
            route('workspaces.stripe.return', $workspace),
            route('workspaces.stripe.refresh', $workspace),
        )
    ]);
}

You might have noticed the declaration of two routes: workspaces.stripe.return and workspaces.stripe.refresh. The workspaces.stripe.return route is designed to manage the action when a user returns from Stripe to our application. Conversely, the workspaces.stripe.refresh route handles the scenario where a user refreshes the Stripe page. In such cases, it's optimal to redirect the user back to the onboarding page. This ensures a seamless user experience and allows users to continue the onboarding process from where they left off, utilizing the URL obtained through the generateOnboardingURL method.

5. Connecting Customers

In the context of Stripe Connect, creating customers is a fundamental operation. To streamline this process, we’ll utilize Laravel’s job dispatching mechanism to create Stripe Customers for each Workspace and WorkspaceUser.

public function generateOnboardingURL(Request $request, Workspace $workspace)
{
    if (!$workspace->hasStripeAccount()) {
        $workspace->createAsStripeAccount('standard');
        CreateStripeCustomersJob::dispatch($workspace->refresh());
    }

    return response()->json([
        'url' => $workspace->accountOnboardingUrl(
            route('workspaces.stripe.return', $workspace),
            route('workspaces.stripe.refresh', $workspace),
        )
    ]);
}

Next, let’s create a WorkspaceUserObserver where we'll handle the creation of customers for newly registered users.

class WorkspaceUserObserver
{
    public function created(WorkspaceUser $workspaceUser): void
    {
        if (!$workspaceUser->hasCustomerRecord() && $workspaceUser->workspace->hasStripeAccount()) {
            $workspaceUser->createStripeCustomer($workspaceUser->workspace, [
                'email' => $workspaceUser->email,
            ]);
        }
    }
}

By employing job queues and event observers, we ensure that customer creation occurs seamlessly in the background, without disrupting the user experience.

6. Conclusion of Part One

In this first installment, we’ve successfully integrated Stripe Connect into our Laravel application, laying the groundwork for efficient payment processing and account management. Stay tuned for Part Two, where we’ll delve into implementing one-time purchases, subscription models, webhook handling, and more.