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Blog Guide
Jun 4, 2020
An Introduction to COINQVEST's Merchant API, Developer Tools, and Event Logs
COINQVEST's Merchant API suite provides a range of software development kits, open-source GitHub repositories as well as guides and tutorials. This post walks you through developer tools that help you integrate with the COINQVEST Merchant API and debug potential issues with ease.
The purpose of COINQVEST is to enable online merchants to embrace modern digital currencies (like Bitcoin or Stellar Lumens) and compliantly get paid in their local national currency with minimal effort. COINQVEST is built with developers in mind. The core of the platform is based around programming interfaces and software development kits for online businesses and e-commerce platforms and we put a lot of effort into making a developer's integration experience as smooth and effortless as possible.
While our Merchant API is compatible with any modern programming language, there are dedicated software development kits for PHP, Ruby, and NodeJs that can be dropped into an existing code base to get up and running quickly. Our developer guide provides a step-by-step tutorial on how to accept payments online and associate them with customer information. Our guide to COINQVEST's payment SDKs explains how to get started with our drop-in libraries for PHP, Ruby, and NodeJS and introduces our open-source GitHub repositories.
All of the above equip web developers with the tools needed to implement cryptocurrency payment processing into online shops and e-commerce sites, but COINQVEST also offers tools to configure, inspect, monitor, and debug development and production traffic once an integration is up and running. Below is an overview of API settings and API traffic logging available for an online merchant's account.
IP Address Whitelisting
COINQVEST optionally secures API access with an additional layer of safety by giving merchants the option to only permit requests from known IP addresses. It is possible to restrict access to known production or development IPs only.
API Request Logging
COINQVEST's software development kits come with local HTTP request and response logging built-in. On top of that, the platform logs each API request, collects additional context information, and associates them with corresponding payments, customers, and other related objects.
Each API request instantly appears in the API Request Logs segment of an online merchant's COINQVEST account. Entries can be searched by endpoint name or status code and the platform aggregates overall platform usage into beautiful graphs.
An API request entry can be clicked and inspected in detail. Below log item was created when the POST /checkout/hosted
endpoint was invoked from an IP address located in Finland. The request resulted in an 200 OK
HTTP status code being returned, which means that it was successfully processed.
Additionally, a list of related objects, such as the associated customer and payment, was extracted and can be clicked for additional details.
Furthermore, the API log stores a copy of the HTTP request sent by the merchant's application, along with headers, the HTTP request body and the URL query parameters (if any).
Last but not least, a copy of the API response issued by the COINQVEST platform is included in the log item details.
Webhook Logging
Webhook events are HTTP callbacks issued by the COINQVEST platform whenever a specific event, such as a completed payment, occurs. They automatically notify the merchant application that their account has been credited and it is safe to ship their goods or services.
A merchant's application parses the HTTP request body and headers sent by COINQVEST and issues a 200 OK
HTTP status code if the data could be successfully processed. A merchant's account on the COINQVEST platform keeps track of all webhook events sent for debugging and logging purposes. Whenever a webhook occurs, it is instantly logged in the Webhook Requests segment on the platform.
A webhook log item can be clicked to inspect details. The below example is a payment notification. The merchant successfully processed the data and replied with a 200 OK
status code. Context information includes a timestamp and the exact URL to which the webhook was sent. The view also includes a list of associated objects such as the related customer, currencies, and payment information, which can be inspected by mouse click.
The webhook log item contains a copy of the HTTP request headers and body sent by the COINQVEST application.
In addition, a copy of the HTTP response headers and body is available for further inspection. This is extremely useful for developers as it might contain information about possible issues with their webhook listener implementation.
Get Started
Our API documentation provides all the information needed to collect payments, manage customers, maintain wallets and get notified when a payment completes. We also published a step-by-step guide to help developers get started.
We love to help!
If you have questions, feedback, or improvement suggestions please feel free to contact us directly anytime.