[freeside] 1.4.0pre3 doc error, signup coupons, & credit card ideas

[ivan]

On Fri, Oct 12, 2001 at 04:48:11PM -0500, Jeff Foster wrote:
> > > Credit card ideas -
> > > 
> > > I would like to see the system support automatically charging users
> > > credit cards when the user's time runs out.
> > 
> > Currently the software runs on monthly billing cycles; you can bill a
> > customer every month or every N months, and you can caclulate the amount
> > to bill them at that time to implement metered billing.
> > 
> > There aren't currently hooks to trigger billing when an event occurs
> > ("time runs out"). 
> 
> How would you recommend doing this? Crons & perl or something more elegant?

I'd add callbacks for the events you're trying to montior, and use the
new job queue to trigger your billing events.

The larger problem is that the database schema is modeled around regular
recurring billings.  You'd have to make changes to accomodate irregular
billings like you describe.

> > > I understand that storing
> > > customer credit card information is a BAD thing. To get around this
> > > problem I am suggesting that this data should be store using encrypted 
> > > values. Then the admin could run a script that would prompt for the
> > > encryption passkey and then process the credit card transactions.
> 
> I'm looking for some guidance here, what encryption scheme would be best?

You probably want an asymmetric encryption scheme; processing inserting
cards into the database would use a public key, and processes which need
to process cards would use the corresponding private key.

> Please limit your answers to a scheme that is available in perl, because
> I don't want to impliment the encryption system, just use it. A search 
> of cpan.org yields a pretty good list.

Yes, that's an important consideration.  Try using Crypt::RSA for now, but
try to abstract it's usage in a single place so it can be swapped out for
other algorythms later. 

> > > I would like to see the system support an automatic check draft system
> > > using the same idea for data encryption. 
> 
> I have done some work on check draft writing. What is the prefered
> output, PCL or postscript?  

Postscript.

-- 
_ivan