Configuring Stripe for .NET

Resources

Adding the library

# install stripe
dotnet add package Stripe.net
# for reading local env file
# NOT REQUIRED unless you want to read from .env
dotnet add package DotNetEnv
# install required code generation code
Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.CodeGeneration.Design
# global install scaffolding tool
dotnet tool install --global dotnet-aspnet-codegenerator
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Adding a Dotenv file

touch .env
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Within the Dotenv file, we need to add your test keys from Stripe's website.

SK_TEST_KEY= sk_test...
PK_TEST_KEY=pk_test...
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Updating your settings file

If you are going to use another method to fetch the variables (ie secrets etc), you could add the following to your appsettings.json file:

{
  // previous key/values omitted for brevity
  "Stripe": {
    "SecretKey": "SK_TEST_KEY", // this will eval to sk_test_... .env
    "PublishableKey": "PK_TEST_KEY" // this will eval to sk_test_... from .env
  }
}
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Make sure to check the docs on passing parameters to understand how this works.

Add Stripe config to Startup.cs

using Stripe;
using DotNetEnv;

// ... code omitted for brevity

public Startup(IConfiguration configuration)
{
    Configuration = configuration;
    // load .env file
    DotNetEnv.Env.Load();
    // set config using env var
    StripeConfiguration.ApiKey = System.Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("SK_TEST_KEY");
}
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Create the Model

// in Models/StripeCharge.cs
namespace ChargeApi.Models
{
    public class StripeCharge
    {
        public long Amount { get; set; }
        public string Currency { get; set; }
        public string Source { get; set; }
        public string ReceiptEmail { get; set; }
    }
}
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Create the Controller

// Controllers/Charge.cs
using System.Collections.Generic;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
using Stripe;
using ChargeApi.Models;

namespace dotnet_stripe.Controllers
{
    [ApiController]
    [Route("api/charges")]
    public class ChargesController : Controller
    {
        [HttpPost]
        public Stripe.Charge CreateCharge([FromBody] StripeCharge createOptions)
        {
            var options = new ChargeCreateOptions
            {
                Amount = createOptions.Amount,
                Currency = "usd",
                Source = "tok_visa",
                ReceiptEmail = "tim.apple@example.com",
            };
            var service = new ChargeService();
            var charge = service.Create(options);
            return charge;
        }
    }
}
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Sending the request on HTTPie

Since we are sending back the response from the Stripe.Charge object, it will be very verbose and not what you want to do in reality for the API.

Using HTTPie (check resource [12]), we can check for our 200 response with the full JSON body returned by Stripe by calling http POST http://localhost:5000/api/charges Amount:=200 in our console.

Check the Stripe developer console

Heading to our Stripe dashboard and checking under Developers > Events, one can see our payment made for US$2.00 by "tim.apple@example.com". Great success!

Of course, all those values are coded and not exactly what we want in the real world... but we are connected.