4 ms·

What do you think of Stripe's docs? As an Elixir dev I'm somewhat dismayed at their trend towards assuming everyone is using one of their blessed handful of lan

What do you think of Stripe's docs? As an Elixir dev I'm somewhat dismayed at their trend towards assuming everyone is using one of their blessed handful of languages. I mean, it's great that they've made a few official integration libraries, but if all the docs assume you're using one of them then the docs leave out crucial information about how to work with their systems for everyone else. I suspect the information is all there somewhere but at least since SCA, it's buried. At least for me, the dev experience using Stripe has deteriorated quite a bit in the past 2 years.

lisper 7y ago
Stripe's documentation is excellent. All you really need is a REST API.
- AlchemistCamp 7y ago
  There's definitely more to it than that. I wrote a very lengthy comment about my experience working through their payment intents docs with basic REST requests and hit quite a few errors due to requirements not mentioned either here or any linked page: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-payment https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-payment It's worthy of a whole blog post, though, so I'll share it that way.
  - lisper 7y ago
    What can I say? I had no problems. But maybe you were trying to do something more complicated than I was.
    - AlchemistCamp 7y ago
      Ok, here's the short version: My experience going through the payment intents was that sending POSTs exactly as described was an immediate error for not sending a version in the request header. Nowhere in the doc was this requirement mentioned: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-payment https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-payment The problem is step 1: "Use our official libraries for access to the Stripe API from your application" Similarly the link on this page regarding webhooks leads to another page with similarly insufficient docs: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/handling-payment-events#build-your-own-webhook https://stripe.com/docs/payments/handling-payment-events#bui... If you're not using their library, there's no info about how to parse the webhook signatures and verify them. There isn't on this page either: https://stripe.com/docs/api/webhook_endpoints/ https://stripe.com/docs/api/webhook_endpoints/ It ended up taking me half an hour to find a page that actually explained (with no examples) how to actually do it. "Use the official library (and we have no plans to support more languages)" is not excellent documentation. TBH, it was one of the more frustrating experiences I've had with anyone's API docs in the past 2 years.
      - lisper 7y ago
        Again, what can I say? I wrote my stripe code over three years ago so I don't recall many of the details. All I know is that I don't recall having any trouble with it.
        AlchemistCamp 7y ago
        FWIW, I finally found what I needed after finding some of their older docs that predate SCA.

lisper 7y ago

Stripe's documentation is excellent. All you really need is a REST API.

AlchemistCamp 7y ago
There's definitely more to it than that. I wrote a very lengthy comment about my experience working through their payment intents docs with basic REST requests and hit quite a few errors due to requirements not mentioned either here or any linked page: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-payment https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-payment It's worthy of a whole blog post, though, so I'll share it that way.
- lisper 7y ago
  What can I say? I had no problems. But maybe you were trying to do something more complicated than I was.
  - AlchemistCamp 7y ago
    Ok, here's the short version: My experience going through the payment intents was that sending POSTs exactly as described was an immediate error for not sending a version in the request header. Nowhere in the doc was this requirement mentioned: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-payment https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-payment The problem is step 1: "Use our official libraries for access to the Stripe API from your application" Similarly the link on this page regarding webhooks leads to another page with similarly insufficient docs: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/handling-payment-events#build-your-own-webhook https://stripe.com/docs/payments/handling-payment-events#bui... If you're not using their library, there's no info about how to parse the webhook signatures and verify them. There isn't on this page either: https://stripe.com/docs/api/webhook_endpoints/ https://stripe.com/docs/api/webhook_endpoints/ It ended up taking me half an hour to find a page that actually explained (with no examples) how to actually do it. "Use the official library (and we have no plans to support more languages)" is not excellent documentation. TBH, it was one of the more frustrating experiences I've had with anyone's API docs in the past 2 years.
    - lisper 7y ago
      Again, what can I say? I wrote my stripe code over three years ago so I don't recall many of the details. All I know is that I don't recall having any trouble with it.
      - AlchemistCamp 7y ago
        FWIW, I finally found what I needed after finding some of their older docs that predate SCA.