FastSpring: automatic product activation not working anymore after update of protect-ebook.net

H

hornet

Member
Hi GDG Team,

I sell an app that I've created with HTMLexe. After the Windows 11 24H2 update, my app didn't work anymore on W24H2. So I renewed my HTMLexe maintenance subscription, updated HTMLexe, re-compiled my app, and—yeeeehah—it worked again on W11 24H2.

However, after two weeks and a few new customers who bought the products issue-free in between, protect-ebook.net forced me to run an update of itself, which I happily did as the prior updates never caused any issues. After the update, I have a new problem now: customers can still buy (and pay for) the program via FastSpring, they can even download the product there, but

(1) the protect-ebook.net activation server doesn't trigger a new license creation for the new customer and
(2) I don't get a notification about the new sale from FastSpring anymore.

This then usually results in
(1) me receiving an upset customer's email asking me where their activation code is
(2) me logging on to protect-ebook.net client to manually create the new customer there, creating an activation code and sending it to the customer via email

As everything worked fine up until the update of protect-ebook.net early this year, I strongly believe the current malfunctioning of the purchasing process comes from protect-ebook.net.

Could you please let me know your thoughts and let me know how I can fix this issue?

Thanks and best regards!
 
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Good news, the problem has been identified and lies within the PHP code used in FastSpring to generate activation keys.
Go to Springboard, edit your product and click Edit:
1743242506426.webp
Then
1743242542310.webp
Make sure in the code editor, look very closely at the beginning of the line. You might not see it, but there's an extra space character there that shouldn't be. Delete the extra space: Simply delete the extra space character at the beginning of line 8. Make sure there are no leading spaces before $license.
You can also copy/paste the code below:

PHP: 
<?php

$quantity = $quantity;

$license = '';

foreach($name_unicode as $codepoint) {
  $license = $license . '&#'. $codepoint . ';';
}

$SB = strtoupper(md5($reference.$license.$email.'PEEBOOK'.date(DATE_W3C)));
$SB = str_replace("H", "0", $SB);
$S1 = substr($SB, 1, 4).'-'.substr($SB, 6, 4).'-'.substr($SB, 12, 4).'-'.substr($reference, strlen($reference)-4, 4);

print($S1);

?>

Save the changes and the notifications should work again.
 
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For some reason I cannot post my answer here in the regular way anymore, so I've attached it as a pdf file, alongside the error message from the GDG forum

in a nutshell: the above-proposed solution unfortunately didn't work

is there another way to solve the issue?
 

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Thank you for the additional report. According to the debug log on ProtectEbook.net, we haven't received any notifications from your FastSpring account, which suggests there may be an issue on FastSpring's end. I recommend reaching out to FastSpring’s support team. They previously identified our issue with the extra space in the key generator, so they might also be able to check their logs and determine why notifications are no longer being sent from your account to ProtectEbook.net too.
 
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I've received Feedback from the FastSpring Customer Service. Below is their feedback. Is there anything you can do based on their feedback?

I'm truly sorry—I'm sure it's frustrating not to have everything working as expected.

I’ve taken a close look at how the notifications are configured and didn’t find anything unusual. The setup appears to follow common patterns we see across many accounts, and at this time, we haven’t received any reports from other customers experiencing notification issues.

Our system flags any non-2XX responses (typically 200 OK) under Notification Issues, and I didn’t find any such records for your recent activity. I also reviewed your test orders—license fulfillment is functioning properly, and the email content is rendering as expected.

I genuinely wish I had a concrete solution to offer, but based on everything I’m seeing, the notification is firing as intended. Please let me know if there's anything else you'd like me to check or assist with.
 
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No, because they say nothing seems to be wrong on their side. But still, we receive no notification on the server from FastSpring in your case. What notification URL is entered into FastSpring? (you can send it by private message).
 
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