Laravel Cashier (Stripe)
Introduction
Laravel Cashier Stripe provides an expressive, fluent interface to Stripe's subscription billing services. It handles almost all of the boilerplate subscription billing code you are dreading writing. In addition to basic subscription management, Cashier can handle coupons, swapping subscription, subscription "quantities", cancellation grace periods, and even generate invoice PDFs.
Upgrading Cashier
When upgrading to a new version of Cashier, it's important that you carefully review the upgrade guide.
To prevent breaking changes, Cashier uses a fixed Stripe API version. Cashier 15 utilizes Stripe API version 2023-10-16. The Stripe API version will be updated on minor releases in order to make use of new Stripe features and improvements.
Installation
First, install the Cashier package for Stripe using the Composer package manager:
After installing the package, publish Cashier's migrations using the vendor:publish Artisan command:
Then, migrate your database:
Cashier's migrations will add several columns to your users table. They will also create a new subscriptions table to hold all of your customer's subscriptions and a subscription_items table for subscriptions with multiple prices.
If you wish, you can also publish Cashier's configuration file using the vendor:publish Artisan command:
Lastly, to ensure Cashier properly handles all Stripe events, remember to configure Cashier's webhook handling.
Stripe recommends that any column used for storing Stripe identifiers should be case-sensitive. Therefore, you should ensure the column collation for the stripe_id column is set to utf8_bin when using MySQL. More information regarding this can be found in the Stripe documentation.
Configuration
Billable Model
Before using Cashier, add the Billable trait to your billable model definition. Typically, this will be the App\Models\User model. This trait provides various methods to allow you to perform common billing tasks, such as creating subscriptions, applying coupons, and updating payment method information:
Cashier assumes your billable model will be the App\Models\User class that ships with Laravel. If you wish to change this you may specify a different model via the useCustomerModel method. This method should typically be called in the boot method of your AppServiceProvider class:
If you're using a model other than Laravel's supplied App\Models\User model, you'll need to publish and alter the Cashier migrations provided to match your alternative model's table name.
API Keys
Next, you should configure your Stripe API keys in your application's .env file. You can retrieve your Stripe API keys from the Stripe control panel:
You should ensure that the STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET environment variable is defined in your application's .env file, as this variable is used to ensure that incoming webhooks are actually from Stripe.
Currency Configuration
The default Cashier currency is United States Dollars (USD). You can change the default currency by setting the CASHIER_CURRENCY environment variable within your application's .env file:
In addition to configuring Cashier's currency, you may also specify a locale to be used when formatting money values for display on invoices. Internally, Cashier utilizes PHP's NumberFormatter class to set the currency locale:
In order to use locales other than en, ensure the ext-intl PHP extension is installed and configured on your server.
Tax Configuration
Thanks to Stripe Tax, it's possible to automatically calculate taxes for all invoices generated by Stripe. You can enable automatic tax calculation by invoking the calculateTaxes method in the boot method of your application's App\Providers\AppServiceProvider class:
Once tax calculation has been enabled, any new subscriptions and any one-off invoices that are generated will receive automatic tax calculation.
For this feature to work properly, your customer's billing details, such as the customer's name, address, and tax ID, need to be synced to Stripe. You may use the customer data synchronization and Tax ID methods offered by Cashier to accomplish this.
No tax is calculated for single charges or single charge checkouts.
Logging
Cashier allows you to specify the log channel to be used when logging fatal Stripe errors. You may specify the log channel by defining the CASHIER_LOGGER environment variable within your application's .env file:
Exceptions that are generated by API calls to Stripe will be logged through your application's default log channel.
Using Custom Models
You are free to extend the models used internally by Cashier by defining your own model and extending the corresponding Cashier model:
After defining your model, you may instruct Cashier to use your custom model via the Laravel\Cashier\Cashier class. Typically, you should inform Cashier about your custom models in the boot method of your application's App\Providers\AppServiceProvider class:
Quickstart
Selling Products
Before utilizing Stripe Checkout, you should define Products with fixed prices in your Stripe dashboard. In addition, you should configure Cashier's webhook handling.
Offering product and subscription billing via your application can be intimidating. However, thanks to Cashier and Stripe Checkout, you can easily build modern, robust payment integrations.
To charge customers for non-recurring, single-charge products, we'll utilize Cashier to direct customers to Stripe Checkout, where they will provide their payment details and confirm their purchase. Once the payment has been made via Checkout, the customer will be redirected to a success URL of your choosing within your application:
As you can see in the example above, we will utilize Cashier's provided checkout method to redirect the customer to Stripe Checkout for a given "price identifier". When using Stripe, "prices" refer to defined prices for specific products.
If necessary, the checkout method will automatically create a customer in Stripe and connect that Stripe customer record to the corresponding user in your application's database. After completing the checkout session, the customer will be redirected to a dedicated success or cancellation page where you can display an informational message to the customer.
Providing Meta Data to Stripe Checkout
When selling products, it's common to keep track of completed orders and purchased products via Cart and Order models defined by your own application. When redirecting customers to Stripe Checkout to complete a purchase, you may need to provide an existing order identifier so that you can associate the completed purchase with the corresponding order when the customer is redirected back to your application.
To accomplish this, you may provide an array of metadata to the checkout method. Let's imagine that a pending Order is created within our application when a user begins the checkout process. Remember, the Cart and Order models in this example are illustrative and not provided by Cashier. You are free to implement these concepts based on the needs of your own application:
As you can see in the example above, when a user begins the checkout process, we will provide all of the cart / order's associated Stripe price identifiers to the checkout method. Of course, your application is responsible for associating these items with the "shopping cart" or order as a customer adds them. We also provide the order's ID to the Stripe Checkout session via the metadata array. Finally, we have added the CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID template variable to the Checkout success route. When Stripe redirects customers back to your application, this template variable will automatically be populated with the Checkout session ID.
Next, let's build the Checkout success route. This is the route that users will be redirected to after their purchase has been completed via Stripe Checkout. Within this route, we can retrieve the Stripe Checkout session ID and the associated Stripe Checkout instance in order to access our provided meta data and update our customer's order accordingly:
Please refer to Stripe's documentation for more information on the data contained by the Checkout session object.
Selling Subscriptions
Before utilizing Stripe Checkout, you should define Products with fixed prices in your Stripe dashboard. In addition, you should configure Cashier's webhook handling.
Offering product and subscription billing via your application can be intimidating. However, thanks to Cashier and Stripe Checkout, you can easily build modern, robust payment integrations.
To learn how to sell subscriptions using Cashier and Stripe Checkout, let's consider the simple scenario of a subscription service with a basic monthly (price_basic_monthly) and yearly (price_basic_yearly) plan. These two prices could be grouped under a "Basic" product (pro_basic) in our Stripe dashboard. In addition, our subscription service might offer an Expert plan as pro_expert.
First, let's discover how a customer can subscribe to our services. Of course, you can imagine the customer might click a "subscribe" button for the Basic plan on our application's pricing page. This button or link should direct the user to a Laravel route which creates the Stripe Checkout session for their chosen plan:
As you can see in the example above, we will redirect the customer to a Stripe Checkout session which will allow them to subscribe to our Basic plan. After a successful checkout or cancellation, the customer will be redirected back to the URL we provided to the checkout method. To know when their subscription has actually started (since some payment methods require a few seconds to process), we'll also need to configure Cashier's webhook handling.
Now that customers can start subscriptions, we need to restrict certain portions of our application so that only subscribed users can access them. Of course, we can always determine a user's current subscription status via the subscribed method provided by Cashier's Billable trait:
We can even easily determine if a user is subscribed to specific product or price:
Building a Subscribed Middleware
For convenience, you may wish to create a middleware which determines if the incoming request is from a subscribed user. Once this middleware has been defined, you may easily assign it to a route to prevent users that are not subscribed from accessing the route:
Once the middleware has been defined, you may assign it to a route:
Allowing Customers to Manage Their Billing Plan
Of course, customers may want to change their subscription plan to another product or "tier". The easiest way to allow this is by directing customers to Stripe's Customer Billing Portal, which provides a hosted user interface that allows customers to download invoices, update their payment method, and change subscription plans.
First, define a link or button within your application that directs users to a Laravel route which we will utilize to initiate a Billing Portal session:
Next, let's define the route that initiates a Stripe Customer Billing Portal session and redirects the user to the Portal. The redirectToBillingPortal method accepts the URL that users should be returned to when exiting the Portal:
As long as you have configured Cashier's webhook handling, Cashier will automatically keep your application's Cashier-related database tables in sync by inspecting the incoming webhooks from Stripe. So, for example, when a user cancels their subscription via Stripe's Customer Billing Portal, Cashier will receive the corresponding webhook and mark the subscription as "cancelled" in your application's database.
Customers
Retrieving Customers
You can retrieve a customer by their Stripe ID using the Cashier::findBillable method. This method will return an instance of the billable model:
Creating Customers
Occasionally, you may wish to create a Stripe customer without beginning a subscription. You may accomplish this using the createAsStripeCustomer method:
Once the customer has been created in Stripe, you may begin a subscription at a later date. You may provide an optional $options array to pass in any additional customer creation parameters that are supported by the Stripe API:
You may use the asStripeCustomer method if you want to return the Stripe customer object for a billable model:
The createOrGetStripeCustomer method may be used if you would like to retrieve the Stripe customer object for a given billable model but are not sure whether the billable model is already a customer within Stripe. This method will create a new customer in Stripe if one does not already exist:
Updating Customers
Occasionally, you may wish to update the Stripe customer directly with additional information. You may accomplish this using the updateStripeCustomer method. This method accepts an array of customer update options supported by the Stripe API:
Balances
Stripe allows you to credit or debit a customer's "balance". Later, this balance will be credited or debited on new invoices. To check the customer's total balance you may use the balance method that is available on your billable model. The balance method will return a formatted string representation of the balance in the customer's currency:
To credit a customer's balance, you may provide a value to the creditBalance method. If you wish, you may also provide a description:
Providing a value to the debitBalance method will debit the customer's balance:
The applyBalance method will create new customer balance transactions for the customer. You may retrieve these transaction records using the balanceTransactions method, which may be useful in order to provide a log of credits and debits for the customer to review:
Tax IDs
Cashier offers an easy way to manage a customer's tax IDs. For example, the taxIds method may be used to retrieve all of the tax IDs that are assigned to a customer as a collection:
You can also retrieve a specific tax ID for a customer by its identifier:
You may create a new Tax ID by providing a valid type and value to the createTaxId method:
The createTaxId method will immediately add the VAT ID to the customer's account. Verification of VAT IDs is also done by Stripe; however, this is an asynchronous process. You can be notified of verification updates by subscribing to the customer.tax_id.updated webhook event and inspecting the VAT IDs verification parameter. For more information on handling webhooks, please consult the documentation on defining webhook handlers.
You may delete a tax ID using the deleteTaxId method:
Syncing Customer Data With Stripe
Typically, when your application's users update their name, email address, or other information that is also stored by Stripe, you should inform Stripe of the updates. By doing so, Stripe's copy of the information will be in sync with your application's.
To automate this, you may define an event listener on your billable model that reacts to the model's updated event. Then, within your event listener, you may invoke the syncStripeCustomerDetails method on the model:
Now, every time your customer model is updated, its information will be synced with Stripe. For convenience, Cashier will automatically sync your customer's information with Stripe on the initial creation of the customer.
You may customize the columns used for syncing customer information to Stripe by overriding a variety of methods provided by Cashier. For example, you may override the stripeName method to customize the attribute that should be considered the customer's "name" when Cashier syncs customer information to Stripe:
Similarly, you may override the stripeEmail, stripePhone, stripeAddress, and stripePreferredLocales methods. These methods will sync information to their corresponding customer parameters when updating the Stripe customer object. If you wish to take total control over the customer information sync process, you may override the syncStripeCustomerDetails method.
Billing Portal
Stripe offers an easy way to set up a billing portal so that your customer can manage their subscription, payment methods, and view their billing history. You can redirect your users to the billing portal by invoking the redirectToBillingPortal method on the billable model from a controller or route:
By default, when the user is finished managing their subscription, they will be able to return to the home route of your application via a link within the Stripe billing portal. You may provide a custom URL that the user should return to by passing the URL as an argument to the redirectToBillingPortal method:
If you would like to generate the URL to the billing portal without generating an HTTP redirect response, you may invoke the billingPortalUrl method:
Payment Methods
Storing Payment Methods
In order to create subscriptions or perform "one-off" charges with Stripe, you will need to store a payment method and retrieve its identifier from Stripe. The approach used to accomplish this differs based on whether you plan to use the payment method for subscriptions or single charges, so we will examine both below.
Payment Methods for Subscriptions
When storing a customer's credit card information for future use by a subscription, the Stripe "Setup Intents" API must be used to securely gather the customer's payment method details. A "Setup Intent" indicates to Stripe the intention to charge a customer's payment method. Cashier's Billable trait includes the createSetupIntent method to easily create a new Setup Intent. You should invoke this method from the route or controller that will render the form which gathers your customer's payment method details:
After you have created the Setup Intent and passed it to the view, you should attach its secret to the element that will gather the payment method. For example, consider this "update payment method" form:
Next, the Stripe.js library may be used to attach a Stripe Element to the form and securely gather the customer's payment details:
Next, the card can be verified and a secure "payment method identifier" can be retrieved from Stripe using Stripe's confirmCardSetup method:
After the card has been verified by Stripe, you may pass the resulting setupIntent.payment_method identifier to your Laravel application, where it can be attached to the customer. The payment method can either be added as a new payment method or used to update the default payment method. You can also immediately use the payment method identifier to create a new subscription.
If you would like more information about Setup Intents and gathering customer payment details please review this overview provided by Stripe.
Payment Methods for Single Charges
Of course, when making a single charge against a customer's payment method, we will only need to use a payment method identifier once. Due to Stripe limitations, you may not use the stored default payment method of a customer for single charges. You must allow the customer to enter their payment method details using the Stripe.js library. For example, consider the following form:
After defining such a form, the Stripe.js library may be used to attach a Stripe Element to the form and securely gather the customer's payment details:
Next, the card can be verified and a secure "payment method identifier" can be retrieved from Stripe using Stripe's createPaymentMethod method:
If the card is verified successfully, you may pass the paymentMethod.id to your Laravel application and process a single charge.
Retrieving Payment Methods
The paymentMethods method on the billable model instance returns a collection of Laravel\Cashier\PaymentMethod instances:
By default, this method will return payment methods of every type. To retrieve payment methods of a specific type, you may pass the type as an argument to the method:
To retrieve the customer's default payment method, the defaultPaymentMethod method may be used:
You can retrieve a specific payment method that is attached to the billable model using the findPaymentMethod method:
Payment Method Presence
To determine if a billable model has a default payment method attached to their account, invoke the hasDefaultPaymentMethod method:
You may use the hasPaymentMethod method to determine if a billable model has at least one payment method attached to their account:
This method will determine if the billable model has any payment method at all. To determine if a payment method of a specific type exists for the model, you may pass the type as an argument to the method:
Updating the Default Payment Method
The updateDefaultPaymentMethod method may be used to update a customer's default payment method information. This method accepts a Stripe payment method identifier and will assign the new payment method as the default billing payment method:
To sync your default payment method information with the customer's default payment method information in Stripe, you may use the updateDefaultPaymentMethodFromStripe method:
The default payment method on a customer can only be used for invoicing and creating new subscriptions. Due to limitations imposed by Stripe, it may not be used for single charges.
Adding Payment Methods
To add a new payment method, you may call the addPaymentMethod method on the billable model, passing the payment method identifier:
To learn how to retrieve payment method identifiers please review the payment method storage documentation.
Deleting Payment Methods
To delete a payment method, you may call the delete method on the Laravel\Cashier\PaymentMethod instance you wish to delete:
The deletePaymentMethod method will delete a specific payment method from the billable model:
The deletePaymentMethods method will delete all of the payment method information for the billable model:
By default, this method will delete payment methods of every type. To delete payment methods of a specific type you can pass the type as an argument to the method:
If a user has an active subscription, your application should not allow them to delete their default payment method.
Subscriptions
Subscriptions provide a way to set up recurring payments for your customers. Stripe subscriptions managed by Cashier provide support for multiple subscription prices, subscription quantities, trials, and more.
Creating Subscriptions
To create a subscription, first retrieve an instance of your billable model, which typically will be an instance of App\Models\User. Once you have retrieved the model instance, you may use the newSubscription method to create the model's subscription:
The first argument passed to the newSubscription method should be the internal type of the subscription. If your application only offers a single subscription, you might call this default or primary. This subscription type is only for internal application usage and is not meant to be shown to users. In addition, it should not contain spaces and it should never be changed after creating the subscription. The second argument is the specific price the user is subscribing to. This value should correspond to the price's identifier in Stripe.
The create method, which accepts a Stripe payment method identifier or Stripe PaymentMethod object, will begin the subscription as well as update your database with the billable model's Stripe customer ID and other relevant billing information.
Passing a payment method identifier directly to the create subscription method will also automatically add it to the user's stored payment methods.
Collecting Recurring Payments via Invoice Emails
Instead of collecting a customer's recurring payments automatically, you may instruct Stripe to email an invoice to the customer each time their recurring payment is due. Then, the customer may manually pay the invoice once they receive it. The customer does not need to provide a payment method up front when collecting recurring payments via invoices:
The amount of time a customer has to pay their invoice before their subscription is cancelled is determined by the days_until_due option. By default, this is 30 days; however, you may provide a specific value for this option if you wish:
Quantities
If you would like to set a specific quantity for the price when creating the subscription, you should invoke the quantity method on the subscription builder before creating the subscription:
Additional Details
If you would like to specify additional customer or subscription options supported by Stripe, you may do so by passing them as the second and third arguments to the create method:
Coupons
If you would like to apply a coupon when creating the subscription, you may use the withCoupon method:
Or, if you would like to apply a Stripe promotion code, you may use the withPromotionCode method:
The given promotion code ID should be the Stripe API ID assigned to the promotion code and not the customer facing promotion code. If you need to find a promotion code ID based on a given customer facing promotion code, you may use the findPromotionCode method:
In the example above, the returned $promotionCode object is an instance of Laravel\Cashier\PromotionCode. This class decorates an underlying Stripe\PromotionCode object. You can retrieve the coupon related to the promotion code by invoking the coupon method:
The coupon instance allows you to determine the discount amount and whether the coupon represents a fixed discount or percentage based discount:
You can also retrieve the discounts that are currently applied to a customer or subscription:
The returned Laravel\Cashier\Discount instances decorate an underlying Stripe\Discount object instance. You may retrieve the coupon related to this discount by invoking the coupon method:
If you would like to apply a new coupon or promotion code to a customer or subscription, you may do so via the applyCoupon or applyPromotionCode methods:
Remember, you should use the Stripe API ID assigned to the promotion code and not the customer facing promotion code. Only one coupon or promotion code can be applied to a customer or subscription at a given time.
For more info on this subject, please consult the Stripe documentation regarding coupons and promotion codes.
Adding Subscriptions
If you would like to add a subscription to a customer who already has a default payment method you may invoke the add method on the subscription builder:
Creating Subscriptions From the Stripe Dashboard
You may also create subscriptions from the Stripe dashboard itself. When doing so, Cashier will sync newly added subscriptions and assign them a type of default. To customize the subscription type that is assigned to dashboard created subscriptions, define webhook event handlers.
In addition, you may only create one type of subscription via the Stripe dashboard. If your application offers multiple subscriptions that use different types, only one type of subscription may be added through the Stripe dashboard.
Finally, you should always make sure to only add one active subscription per type of subscription offered by your application. If a customer has two default subscriptions, only the most recently added subscription will be used by Cashier even though both would be synced with your application's database.
Checking Subscription Status
Once a customer is subscribed to your application, you may easily check their subscription status using a variety of convenient methods. First, the subscribed method returns true if the customer has an active subscription, even if the subscription is currently within its trial period. The subscribed method accepts the type of the subscription as its first argument:
The subscribed method also makes a great candidate for a route middleware, allowing you to filter access to routes and controllers based on the user's subscription status:
If you would like to determine if a user is still within their trial period, you may use the onTrial method. This method can be useful for determining if you should display a warning to the user that they are still on their trial period:
The subscribedToProduct method may be used to determine if the user is subscribed to a given product based on a given Stripe product's identifier. In Stripe, products are collections of prices. In this example, we will determine if the user's default subscription is actively subscribed to the application's "premium" product. The given Stripe product identifier should correspond to one of your product's identifiers in the Stripe dashboard:
By passing an array to the subscribedToProduct method, you may determine if the user's default subscription is actively subscribed to the application's "basic" or "premium" product:
The subscribedToPrice method may be used to determine if a customer's subscription corresponds to a given price ID:
The recurring method may be used to determine if the user is currently subscribed and is no longer within their trial period:
If a user has two subscriptions with the same type, the most recent subscription will always be returned by the subscription method. For example, a user might have two subscription records with the type of default; however, one of the subscriptions may be an old, expired subscription, while the other is the current, active subscription. The most recent subscription will always be returned while older subscriptions are kept in the database for historical review.
Canceled Subscription Status
To determine if the user was once an active subscriber but has canceled their subscription, you may use the canceled method:
You may also determine if a user has canceled their subscription but are still on their "grace period" until the subscription fully expires. For example, if a user cancels a subscription on March 5th that was originally scheduled to expire on March 10th, the user is on their "grace period" until March 10th. Note that the subscribed method still returns true during this time:
To determine if the user has canceled their subscription and is no longer within their "grace period", you may use the ended method:
Incomplete and Past Due Status
If a subscription requires a secondary payment action after creation the subscription will be marked as incomplete. Subscription statuses are stored in the stripe_status column of Cashier's subscriptions database table.
Similarly, if a secondary payment action is required when swapping prices the subscription will be marked as past_due. When your subscription is in either of these states it will not be active until the customer has confirmed their payment. Determining if a subscription has an incomplete payment may be accomplished using the hasIncompletePayment method on the billable model or a subscription instance:
When a subscription has an incomplete payment, you should direct the user to Cashier's payment confirmation page, passing the latestPayment identifier. You may use the latestPayment method available on subscription instance to retrieve this identifier:
If you would like the subscription to still be considered active when it's in a past_due or incomplete state, you may use the keepPastDueSubscriptionsActive and keepIncompleteSubscriptionsActive methods provided by Cashier. Typically, these methods should be called in the register method of your App\Providers\AppServiceProvider:
When a subscription is in an incomplete state it cannot be changed until the payment is confirmed. Therefore, the swap and updateQuantity methods will throw an exception when the subscription is in an incomplete state.
Subscription Scopes
Most subscription states are also available as query scopes so that you may easily query your database for subscriptions that are in a given state:
A complete list of available scopes is available below:
Changing Prices
After a customer is subscribed to your application, they may occasionally want to change to a new subscription price. To swap a customer to a new price, pass the Stripe price's identifier to the swap method. When swapping prices, it is assumed that the user would like to re-activate their subscription if it was previously canceled. The given price identifier should correspond to a Stripe price identifier available in the Stripe dashboard:
If the customer is on trial, the trial period will be maintained. Additionally, if a "quantity" exists for the subscription, that quantity will also be maintained.
If you would like to swap prices and cancel any trial period the customer is currently on, you may invoke the skipTrial method:
If you would like to swap prices and immediately invoice the customer instead of waiting for their next billing cycle, you may use the swapAndInvoice method:
Prorations
By default, Stripe prorates charges when swapping between prices. The noProrate method may be used to update the subscription's price without prorating the charges:
For more information on subscription proration, consult the Stripe documentation.
Executing the noProrate method before the swapAndInvoice method will have no effect on proration. An invoice will always be issued.
Subscription Quantity
Sometimes subscriptions are affected by "quantity". For example, a project management application might charge $10 per month per project. You may use the incrementQuantity and decrementQuantity methods to easily increment or decrement your subscription quantity:
Alternatively, you may set a specific quantity using the updateQuantity method:
The noProrate method may be used to update the subscription's quantity without prorating the charges:
For more information on subscription quantities, consult the Stripe documentation.
Quantities for Subscriptions With Multiple Products
If your subscription is a subscription with multiple products, you should pass the ID of the price whose quantity you wish to increment or decrement as the second argument to the increment / decrement methods:
Subscriptions With Multiple Products
Subscription with multiple products allow you to assign multiple billing products to a single subscription. For example, imagine you are building a customer service "helpdesk" application that has a base subscription price of $10 per month but offers a live chat add-on product for an additional $15 per month. Information for subscriptions with multiple products is stored in Cashier's subscription_items database table.
You may specify multiple products for a given subscription by passing an array of prices as the second argument to the newSubscription method:
In the example above, the customer will have two prices attached to their default subscription. Both prices will be charged on their respective billing intervals. If necessary, you may use the quantity method to indicate a specific quantity for each price:
If you would like to add another price to an existing subscription, you may invoke the subscription's addPrice method:
The example above will add the new price and the customer will be billed for it on their next billing cycle. If you would like to bill the customer immediately you may use the addPriceAndInvoice method:
If you would like to add a price with a specific quantity, you can pass the quantity as the second argument of the addPrice or addPriceAndInvoice methods:
You may remove prices from subscriptions using the removePrice method:
You may not remove the last price on a subscription. Instead, you should simply cancel the subscription.
Swapping Prices
You may also change the prices attached to a subscription with multiple products. For example, imagine a customer has a price_basic subscription with a price_chat add-on product and you want to upgrade the customer from the price_basic to the price_pro price:
When executing the example above, the underlying subscription item with the price_basic is deleted and the one with the price_chat is preserved. Additionally, a new subscription item for the price_pro is created.
You can also specify subscription item options by passing an array of key / value pairs to the swap method. For example, you may need to specify the subscription price quantities:
If you want to swap a single price on a subscription, you may do so using the swap method on the subscription item itself. This approach is particularly useful if you would like to preserve all of the existing metadata on the subscription's other prices:
Proration
By default, Stripe will prorate charges when adding or removing prices from a subscription with multiple products. If you would like to make a price adjustment without proration, you should chain the noProrate method onto your price operation:
Quantities
If you would like to update quantities on individual subscription prices, you may do so using the existing quantity methods by passing the ID of the price as an additional argument to the method:
When a subscription has multiple prices the stripe_price and quantity attributes on the Subscription model will be null. To access the individual price attributes, you should use the items relationship available on the Subscription model.
Subscription Items
When a subscription has multiple prices, it will have multiple subscription "items" stored in your database's subscription_items table. You may access these via the items relationship on the subscription:
You can also retrieve a specific price using the findItemOrFail method:
Multiple Subscriptions
Stripe allows your customers to have multiple subscriptions simultaneously. For example, you may run a gym that offers a swimming subscription and a weight-lifting subscription, and each subscription may have different pricing. Of course, customers should be able to subscribe to either or both plans.
When your application creates subscriptions, you may provide the type of the subscription to the newSubscription method. The type may be any string that represents the type of subscription the user is initiating:
In this example, we initiated a monthly swimming subscription for the customer. However, they may want to swap to a yearly subscription at a later time. When adjusting the customer's subscription, we can simply swap the price on the swimming subscription:
Of course, you may also cancel the subscription entirely:
Metered Billing
Metered billing allows you to charge customers based on their product usage during a billing cycle. For example, you may charge customers based on the number of text messages or emails they send per month.
To start using metered billing, you will first need to create a new product in your Stripe dashboard with a metered price. Then, use the meteredPrice to add the metered price ID to a customer subscription:
You may also start a metered subscription via Stripe Checkout:
Reporting Usage
As your customer uses your application, you will report their usage to Stripe so that they can be billed accurately. To increment the usage of a metered subscription, you may use the reportUsage method:
By default, a "usage quantity" of 1 is added to the billing period. Alternatively, you may pass a specific amount of "usage" to add to the customer's usage for the billing period:
If your application offers multiple prices on a single subscription, you will need to use the reportUsageFor method to specify the metered price you want to report usage for:
Sometimes, you may need to update usage which you have previously reported. To accomplish this, you may pass a timestamp or a DateTimeInterface instance as the second parameter to reportUsage. When doing so, Stripe will update the usage that was reported at that given time. You can continue to update previous usage records as the given date and time is still within the current billing period:
Retrieving Usage Records
To retrieve a customer's past usage, you may use a subscription instance's usageRecords method:
If your application offers multiple prices on a single subscription, you may use the usageRecordsFor method to specify the metered price that you wish to retrieve usage records for:
The usageRecords and usageRecordsFor methods return a Collection instance containing an associative array of usage records. You may iterate over this array to display a customer's total usage:
For a full reference of all usage data returned and how to use Stripe's cursor based pagination, please consult the official Stripe API documentation.
Subscription Taxes
Instead of calculating Tax Rates manually, you can automatically calculate taxes using Stripe Tax
To specify the tax rates a user pays on a subscription, you should implement the taxRates method on your billable model and return an array containing the Stripe tax rate IDs. You can define these tax rates in your Stripe dashboard:
The taxRates method enables you to apply a tax rate on a customer-by-customer basis, which may be helpful for a user base that spans multiple countries and tax rates.
If you're offering subscriptions with multiple products, you may define different tax rates for each price by implementing a priceTaxRates method on your billable model:
The taxRates method only applies to subscription charges. If you use Cashier to make "one-off" charges, you will need to manually specify the tax rate at that time.
Syncing Tax Rates
When changing the hard-coded tax rate IDs returned by the taxRates method, the tax settings on any existing subscriptions for the user will remain the same. If you wish to update the tax value for existing subscriptions with the new taxRates values, you should call the syncTaxRates method on the user's subscription instance:
This will also sync any item tax rates for a subscription with multiple products. If your application is offering subscriptions with multiple products, you should ensure that your billable model implements the priceTaxRates method discussed above.
Tax Exemption
Cashier also offers the isNotTaxExempt, isTaxExempt, and reverseChargeApplies methods to determine if the customer is tax exempt. These methods will call the Stripe API to determine a customer's tax exemption status:
These methods are also available on any Laravel\Cashier\Invoice object. However, when invoked on an Invoice object, the methods will determine the exemption status at the time the invoice was created.
Subscription Anchor Date
By default, the billing cycle anchor is the date the subscription was created or, if a trial period is used, the date that the trial ends. If you would like to modify the billing anchor date, you may use the anchorBillingCycleOn method:
For more information on managing subscription billing cycles, consult the Stripe billing cycle documentation
Cancelling Subscriptions
To cancel a subscription, call the cancel method on the user's subscription:
When a subscription is canceled, Cashier will automatically set the ends_at column in your subscriptions database table. This column is used to know when the subscribed method should begin returning false.
For example, if a customer cancels a subscription on March 1st, but the subscription was not scheduled to end until March 5th, the subscribed method will continue to return true until March 5th. This is done because a user is typically allowed to continue using an application until the end of their billing cycle.
You may determine if a user has canceled their subscription but are still on their "grace period" using the onGracePeriod method:
If you wish to cancel a subscription immediately, call the cancelNow method on the user's subscription:
If you wish to cancel a subscription immediately and invoice any remaining un-invoiced metered usage or new / pending proration invoice items, call the cancelNowAndInvoice method on the user's subscription:
You may also choose to cancel the subscription at a specific moment in time:
Finally, you should always cancel user subscriptions before deleting the associated user model:
Resuming Subscriptions
If a customer has canceled their subscription and you wish to resume it, you may invoke the resume method on the subscription. The customer must still be within their "grace period" in order to resume a subscription:
If the customer cancels a subscription and then resumes that subscription before the subscription has fully expired the customer will not be billed immediately. Instead, their subscription will be re-activated and they will be billed on the original billing cycle.
Subscription Trials
With Payment Method Up Front
If you would like to offer trial periods to your customers while still collecting payment method information up front, you should use the trialDays method when creating your subscriptions:
This method will set the trial period ending date on the subscription record within the database and instruct Stripe to not begin billing the customer until after this date. When using the trialDays method, Cashier will overwrite any default trial period configured for the price in Stripe.
If the customer's subscription is not canceled before the trial ending date they will be charged as soon as the trial expires, so you should be sure to notify your users of their trial ending date.
The trialUntil method allows you to provide a DateTime instance that specifies when the trial period should end:
You may determine if a user is within their trial period using either the onTrial method of the user instance or the onTrial method of the subscription instance. The two examples below are equivalent:
You may use the endTrial method to immediately end a subscription trial:
To determine if an existing trial has expired, you may use the hasExpiredTrial methods:
Defining Trial Days in Stripe / Cashier
You may choose to define how many trial days your price's receive in the Stripe dashboard or always pass them explicitly using Cashier. If you choose to define your price's trial days in Stripe you should be aware that new subscriptions, including new subscriptions for a customer that had a subscription in the past, will always receive a trial period unless you explicitly call the skipTrial() method.
Without Payment Method Up Front
If you would like to offer trial periods without collecting the user's payment method information up front, you may set the trial_ends_at column on the user record to your desired trial ending date. This is typically done during user registration:
Be sure to add a date cast for the trial_ends_at attribute within your billable model's class definition.
Cashier refers to this type of trial as a "generic trial", since it is not attached to any existing subscription. The onTrial method on the billable model instance will return true if the current date is not past the value of trial_ends_at:
Once you are ready to create an actual subscription for the user, you may use the newSubscription method as usual:
To retrieve the user's trial ending date, you may use the trialEndsAt method. This method will return a Carbon date instance if a user is on a trial or null if they aren't. You may also pass an optional subscription type parameter if you would like to get the trial ending date for a specific subscription other than the default one:
You may also use the onGenericTrial method if you wish to know specifically that the user is within their "generic" trial period and has not yet created an actual subscription:
Extending Trials
The extendTrial method allows you to extend the trial period of a subscription after the subscription has been created. If the trial has already expired and the customer is already being billed for the subscription, you can still offer them an extended trial. The time spent within the trial period will be deducted from the customer's next invoice:
Handling Stripe Webhooks
You may use the Stripe CLI to help test webhooks during local development.
Stripe can notify your application of a variety of events via webhooks. By default, a route that points to Cashier's webhook controller is automatically registered by the Cashier service provider. This controller will handle all incoming webhook requests.
By default, the Cashier webhook controller will automatically handle cancelling subscriptions that have too many failed charges (as defined by your Stripe settings), customer updates, customer deletions, subscription updates, and payment method changes; however, as we'll soon discover, you can extend this controller to handle any Stripe webhook event you like.
To ensure your application can handle Stripe webhooks, be sure to configure the webhook URL in the Stripe control panel. By default, Cashier's webhook controller responds to the /stripe/webhook URL path. The full list of all webhooks you should enable in the Stripe control panel are:
-
customer.subscription.created -
customer.subscription.updated -
customer.subscription.deleted -
customer.updated -
customer.deleted -
payment_method.automatically_updated -
invoice.payment_action_required -
invoice.payment_succeeded
For convenience, Cashier includes a cashier:webhook Artisan command. This command will create a webhook in Stripe that listens to all of the events required by Cashier:
By default, the created webhook will point to the URL defined by the APP_URL environment variable and the cashier.webhook route that is included with Cashier. You may provide the --url option when invoking the command if you would like to use a different URL:
The webhook that is created will use the Stripe API version that your version of Cashier is compatible with. If you would like to use a different Stripe version, you may provide the --api-version option:
After creation, the webhook will be immediately active. If you wish to create the webhook but have it disabled until you're ready, you may provide the --disabled option when invoking the command:
Make sure you protect incoming Stripe webhook requests with Cashier's included webhook signature verification middleware.
Webhooks and CSRF Protection
Since Stripe webhooks need to bypass Laravel's CSRF protection, you should ensure that Laravel does not attempt to validate the CSRF token for incoming Stripe webhooks. To accomplish this, you should exclude stripe/* from CSRF protection in your application's bootstrap/app.php file:
Defining Webhook Event Handlers
Cashier automatically handles subscription cancellations for failed charges and other common Stripe webhook events. However, if you have additional webhook events you would like to handle, you may do so by listening to the following events that are dispatched by Cashier:
-
Laravel\Cashier\Events\WebhookReceived -
Laravel\Cashier\Events\WebhookHandled
Both events contain the full payload of the Stripe webhook. For example, if you wish to handle the invoice.payment_succeeded webhook, you may register a listener that will handle the event:
Verifying Webhook Signatures
To secure your webhooks, you may use Stripe's webhook signatures. For convenience, Cashier automatically includes a middleware which validates that the incoming Stripe webhook request is valid.
To enable webhook verification, ensure that the STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET environment variable is set in your application's .env file. The webhook secret may be retrieved from your Stripe account dashboard.
Single Charges
Simple Charge
If you would like to make a one-time charge against a customer, you may use the charge method on a billable model instance. You will need to provide a payment method identifier as the second argument to the charge method:
The charge method accepts an array as its third argument, allowing you to pass any options you wish to the underlying Stripe charge creation. More information regarding the options available to you when creating charges may be found in the Stripe documentation:
You may also use the charge method without an underlying customer or user. To accomplish this, invoke the charge method on a new instance of your application's billable model:
The charge method will throw an exception if the charge fails. If the charge is successful, an instance of Laravel\Cashier\Payment will be returned from the method:
The charge method accepts the payment amount in the lowest denominator of the currency used by your application. For example, if customers are paying in United States Dollars, amounts should be specified in pennies.
Charge With Invoice
Sometimes you may need to make a one-time charge and offer a PDF invoice to your customer. The invoicePrice method lets you do just that. For example, let's invoice a customer for five new shirts:
The invoice will be immediately charged against the user's default payment method. The invoicePrice method also accepts an array as its third argument. This array contains the billing options for the invoice item. The fourth argument accepted by the method is also an array which should contain the billing options for the invoice itself:
Similarly to invoicePrice, you may use the tabPrice method to create a one-time charge for multiple items (up to 250 items per invoice) by adding them to the customer's "tab" and then invoicing the customer. For example, we may invoice a customer for five shirts and two mugs:
Alternatively, you may use the invoiceFor method to make a "one-off" charge against the customer's default payment method:
Although the invoiceFor method is available for you to use, it is recommended that you use the invoicePrice and tabPrice methods with pre-defined prices. By doing so, you will have access to better analytics and data within your Stripe dashboard regarding your sales on a per-product basis.
The invoice, invoicePrice, and invoiceFor methods will create a Stripe invoice which will retry failed billing attempts. If you do not want invoices to retry failed charges, you will need to close them using the Stripe API after the first failed charge.
Creating Payment Intents
You can create a new Stripe payment intent by invoking the pay method on a billable model instance. Calling this method will create a payment intent that is wrapped in a Laravel\Cashier\Payment instance:
After creating the payment intent, you can return the client secret to your application's frontend so that the user can complete the payment in their browser. To read more about building entire payment flows using Stripe payment intents, please consult the Stripe documentation.
When using the pay method, the default payment methods that are enabled within your Stripe dashboard will be available to the customer. Alternatively, if you only want to allow for some specific payment methods to be used, you may use the payWith method:
The pay and payWith methods accept the payment amount in the lowest denominator of the currency used by your application. For example, if customers are paying in United States Dollars, amounts should be specified in pennies.
Refunding Charges
If you need to refund a Stripe charge, you may use the refund method. This method accepts the Stripe payment intent ID as its first argument:
Invoices
Retrieving Invoices
You may easily retrieve an array of a billable model's invoices using the invoices method. The invoices method returns a collection of Laravel\Cashier\Invoice instances:
If you would like to include pending invoices in the results, you may use the invoicesIncludingPending method:
You may use the findInvoice method to retrieve a specific invoice by its ID:
Displaying Invoice Information
When listing the invoices for the customer, you may use the invoice's methods to display the relevant invoice information. For example, you may wish to list every invoice in a table, allowing the user to easily download any of them:
Upcoming Invoices
To retrieve the upcoming invoice for a customer, you may use the upcomingInvoice method:
Similarly, if the customer has multiple subscriptions, you can also retrieve the upcoming invoice for a specific subscription:
Previewing Subscription Invoices
Using the previewInvoice method, you can preview an invoice before making price changes. This will allow you to determine what your customer's invoice will look like when a given price change is made:
You may pass an array of prices to the previewInvoice method in order to preview invoices with multiple new prices:
Generating Invoice PDFs
Before generating invoice PDFs, you should use Composer to install the Dompdf library, which is the default invoice renderer for Cashier:
From within a route or controller, you may use the downloadInvoice method to generate a PDF download of a given invoice. This method will automatically generate the proper HTTP response needed to download the invoice:
By default, all data on the invoice is derived from the customer and invoice data stored in Stripe. The filename is based on your app.name config value. However, you can customize some of this data by providing an array as the second argument to the downloadInvoice method. This array allows you to customize information such as your company and product details:
The downloadInvoice method also allows for a custom filename via its third argument. This filename will automatically be suffixed with .pdf:
Custom Invoice Renderer
Cashier also makes it possible to use a custom invoice renderer. By default, Cashier uses the DompdfInvoiceRenderer implementation, which utilizes the dompdf PHP library to generate Cashier's invoices. However, you may use any renderer you wish by implementing the Laravel\Cashier\Contracts\InvoiceRenderer interface. For example, you may wish to render an invoice PDF using an API call to a third-party PDF rendering service:
Once you have implemented the invoice renderer contract, you should update the cashier.invoices.renderer configuration value in your application's config/cashier.php configuration file. This configuration value should be set to the class name of your custom renderer implementation.
Checkout
Cashier Stripe also provides support for Stripe Checkout. Stripe Checkout takes the pain out of implementing custom pages to accept payments by providing a pre-built, hosted payment page.
The following documentation contains information on how to get started using Stripe Checkout with Cashier. To learn more about Stripe Checkout, you should also consider reviewing Stripe's own documentation on Checkout.
Product Checkouts
You may perform a checkout for an existing product that has been created within your Stripe dashboard using the checkout method on a billable model. The checkout method will initiate a new Stripe Checkout session. By default, you're required to pass a Stripe Price ID:
If needed, you may also specify a product quantity:
When a customer visits this route they will be redirected to Stripe's Checkout page. By default, when a user successfully completes or cancels a purchase they will be redirected to your home route location, but you may specify custom callback URLs using the success_url and cancel_url options:
When defining your success_url checkout option, you may instruct Stripe to add the checkout session ID as a query string parameter when invoking your URL. To do so, add the literal string {CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID} to your success_url query string. Stripe will replace this placeholder with the actual checkout session ID:
Promotion Codes
By default, Stripe Checkout does not allow user redeemable promotion codes. Luckily, there's an easy way to enable these for your Checkout page. To do so, you may invoke the allowPromotionCodes method:
Single Charge Checkouts
You can also perform a simple charge for an ad-hoc product that has not been created in your Stripe dashboard. To do so you may use the checkoutCharge method on a billable model and pass it a chargeable amount, a product name, and an optional quantity. When a customer visits this route they will be redirected to Stripe's Checkout page:
When using the checkoutCharge method, Stripe will always create a new product and price in your Stripe dashboard. Therefore, we recommend that you create the products up front in your Stripe dashboard and use the checkout method instead.
Subscription Checkouts
Using Stripe Checkout for subscriptions requires you to enable the customer.subscription.created webhook in your Stripe dashboard. This webhook will create the subscription record in your database and store all of the relevant subscription items.
You may also use Stripe Checkout to initiate subscriptions. After defining your subscription with Cashier's subscription builder methods, you may call the checkout method. When a customer visits this route they will be redirected to Stripe's Checkout page:
Just as with product checkouts, you may customize the success and cancellation URLs:
Of course, you can also enable promotion codes for subscription checkouts:
Unfortunately Stripe Checkout does not support all subscription billing options when starting subscriptions. Using the anchorBillingCycleOn method on the subscription builder, setting proration behavior, or setting payment behavior will not have any effect during Stripe Checkout sessions. Please consult the Stripe Checkout Session API documentation to review which parameters are available.
Stripe Checkout and Trial Periods
Of course, you can define a trial period when building a subscription that will be completed using Stripe Checkout:
However, the trial period must be at least 48 hours, which is the minimum amount of trial time supported by Stripe Checkout.
Subscriptions and Webhooks
Remember, Stripe and Cashier update subscription statuses via webhooks, so there's a possibility a subscription might not yet be active when the customer returns to the application after entering their payment information. To handle this scenario, you may wish to display a message informing the user that their payment or subscription is pending.
Collecting Tax IDs
Checkout also supports collecting a customer's Tax ID. To enable this on a checkout session, invoke the collectTaxIds method when creating the session:
When this method is invoked, a new checkbox will be available to the customer that allows them to indicate if they're purchasing as a company. If so, they will have the opportunity to provide their Tax ID number.
If you have already configured automatic tax collection in your application's service provider then this feature will be enabled automatically and there is no need to invoke the collectTaxIds method.
Guest Checkouts
Using the Checkout::guest method, you may initiate checkout sessions for guests of your application that do not have an "account":
Similarly to when creating checkout sessions for existing users, you may utilize additional methods available on the Laravel\Cashier\CheckoutBuilder instance to customize the guest checkout session:
After a guest checkout has been completed, Stripe can dispatch a checkout.session.completed webhook event, so make sure to configure your Stripe webhook to actually send this event to your application. Once the webhook has been enabled within the Stripe dashboard, you may handle the webhook with Cashier. The object contained in the webhook payload will be a checkout object that you may inspect in order to fulfill your customer's order.
Handling Failed Payments
Sometimes, payments for subscriptions or single charges can fail. When this happens, Cashier will throw an Laravel\Cashier\Exceptions\IncompletePayment exception that informs you that this happened. After catching this exception, you have two options on how to proceed.
First, you could redirect your customer to the dedicated payment confirmation page which is included with Cashier. This page already has an associated named route that is registered via Cashier's service provider. So, you may catch the IncompletePayment exception and redirect the user to the payment confirmation page:
On the payment confirmation page, the customer will be prompted to enter their credit card information again and perform any additional actions required by Stripe, such as "3D Secure" confirmation. After confirming their payment, the user will be redirected to the URL provided by the redirect parameter specified above. Upon redirection, message (string) and success (integer) query string variables will be added to the URL. The payment page currently supports the following payment method types:
- Credit Cards
- Alipay
- Bancontact
- BECS Direct Debit
- EPS
- Giropay
- iDEAL
- SEPA Direct Debit
Alternatively, you could allow Stripe to handle the payment confirmation for you. In this case, instead of redirecting to the payment confirmation page, you may setup Stripe's automatic billing emails in your Stripe dashboard. However, if an IncompletePayment exception is caught, you should still inform the user they will receive an email with further payment confirmation instructions.
Payment exceptions may be thrown for the following methods: charge, invoiceFor, and invoice on models using the Billable trait. When interacting with subscriptions, the create method on the SubscriptionBuilder, and the incrementAndInvoice and swapAndInvoice methods on the Subscription and SubscriptionItem models may throw incomplete payment exceptions.
Determining if an existing subscription has an incomplete payment may be accomplished using the hasIncompletePayment method on the billable model or a subscription instance:
You can derive the specific status of an incomplete payment by inspecting the payment property on the exception instance:
Confirming Payments
Some payment methods require additional data in order to confirm payments. For example, SEPA payment methods require additional "mandate" data during the payment process. You may provide this data to Cashier using the withPaymentConfirmationOptions method:
You may consult the Stripe API documentation to review all of the options accepted when confirming payments.
Strong Customer Authentication
If your business or one of your customers is based in Europe you will need to abide by the EU's Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) regulations. These regulations were imposed in September 2019 by the European Union to prevent payment fraud. Luckily, Stripe and Cashier are prepared for building SCA compliant applications.
Before getting started, review Stripe's guide on PSD2 and SCA as well as their documentation on the new SCA APIs.
Payments Requiring Additional Confirmation
SCA regulations often require extra verification in order to confirm and process a payment. When this happens, Cashier will throw a Laravel\Cashier\Exceptions\IncompletePayment exception that informs you that extra verification is needed. More information on how to handle these exceptions be found can be found in the documentation on handling failed payments.
Payment confirmation screens presented by Stripe or Cashier may be tailored to a specific bank or card issuer's payment flow and can include additional card confirmation, a temporary small charge, separate device authentication, or other forms of verification.
Incomplete and Past Due State
When a payment needs additional confirmation, the subscription will remain in an incomplete or past_due state as indicated by its stripe_status database column. Cashier will automatically activate the customer's subscription as soon as payment confirmation is complete and your application is notified by Stripe via webhook of its completion.
For more information on incomplete and past_due states, please refer to our additional documentation on these states.
Off-Session Payment Notifications
Since SCA regulations require customers to occasionally verify their payment details even while their subscription is active, Cashier can send a notification to the customer when off-session payment confirmation is required. For example, this may occur when a subscription is renewing. Cashier's payment notification can be enabled by setting the CASHIER_PAYMENT_NOTIFICATION environment variable to a notification class. By default, this notification is disabled. Of course, Cashier includes a notification class you may use for this purpose, but you are free to provide your own notification class if desired:
To ensure that off-session payment confirmation notifications are delivered, verify that Stripe webhooks are configured for your application and the invoice.payment_action_required webhook is enabled in your Stripe dashboard. In addition, your Billable model should also use Laravel's Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable trait.
Notifications will be sent even when customers are manually making a payment that requires additional confirmation. Unfortunately, there is no way for Stripe to know that the payment was done manually or "off-session". But, a customer will simply see a "Payment Successful" message if they visit the payment page after already confirming their payment. The customer will not be allowed to accidentally confirm the same payment twice and incur an accidental second charge.
Stripe SDK
Many of Cashier's objects are wrappers around Stripe SDK objects. If you would like to interact with the Stripe objects directly, you may conveniently retrieve them using the asStripe method:
You may also use the updateStripeSubscription method to update a Stripe subscription directly:
You may invoke the stripe method on the Cashier class if you would like to use the Stripe\StripeClient client directly. For example, you could use this method to access the StripeClient instance and retrieve a list of prices from your Stripe account:
Testing
When testing an application that uses Cashier, you may mock the actual HTTP requests to the Stripe API; however, this requires you to partially re-implement Cashier's own behavior. Therefore, we recommend allowing your tests to hit the actual Stripe API. While this is slower, it provides more confidence that your application is working as expected and any slow tests may be placed within their own Pest / PHPUnit testing group.
When testing, remember that Cashier itself already has a great test suite, so you should only focus on testing the subscription and payment flow of your own application and not every underlying Cashier behavior.
To get started, add the testing version of your Stripe secret to your phpunit.xml file:
Now, whenever you interact with Cashier while testing, it will send actual API requests to your Stripe testing environment. For convenience, you should pre-fill your Stripe testing account with subscriptions / prices that you may use during testing.
In order to test a variety of billing scenarios, such as credit card denials and failures, you may use the vast range of testing card numbers and tokens provided by Stripe.