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Creating your first Stripe Charge with Python + Flask in 5 minutes

Published: Jun 27, 2020

Last updated: Jun 27, 2020

    In this short series, we are going to look at how to create a charge to Stripe in a number of their officially supported languages!

    Today, we are going to look at how to do so with Python and Flask.

    The expectations are that you have both Python 3 and pip3 installed and have your Stripe API keys setup and ready to go.

    The following comes in part from my documentation website.

    Getting Started

    mkdir python-flask-stripe && cd python-flask-stripe # pip or pip3 depending on env pip3 install Flask pip3 install stripe pip3 install -U python-dotenv touch .env server.py

    Setting up .env

    Fetch your keys from Stripe and replace the following in the file:

    SK_TEST_KEY=sk... # replace sk...

    Writing server.py

    Set up the file to look like the following:

    from flask import Flask from flask import request from dotenv import load_dotenv import stripe import os # Load local .env file and assign key load_dotenv() stripe.api_key = os.environ.get("SK_TEST_KEY") app = Flask(__name__) @app.route("/api/charge", methods = ['POST']) def charge(): try: content = request.get_json() # Print what JSON comes in for the sake of checking print(content) resp = stripe.Charge.create( amount=content['amount'], currency="usd", source="tok_visa", receipt_email=content['receiptEmail'], ) print("Success: %r" % (resp)) return "Successfully charged", 201 except Exception as e: print(e) return "Charge failed", 500 if __name__ == "__main__": app.run()

    The above:

    1. Fetches and sets OS env from .env file.
    2. Sets the Stripe API key.
    3. Sets a route /api/charge that only takes the POST method and creates a charge based on the amount we pass.

    Running the server

    python3 server.py will start the server on port 5000.

    Running http POST http://localhost:5000/api/charge amount:=1700 receiptEmail=hello_flask@example.com (using HTTPie) will come back with success. Check your Stripe dashboard and you will see a charge made for AUD\$17.00! Hooray!

    I chose to use HTTPie because I feel it is a fun tool that more should know about! Alternative, you could do the above using curl as well (or anything that can make a POST request for a matter of fact).

    curl --header "Content-Type: application/json" \ --request POST \ --data '{"amount":1700,"receiptEmail":"hello_flask@example.com"}' \ http://localhost:5000/api/charge

    Stripe Dashboard

    Stripe Dashboard

    Resources and Further Reading

    Image credit: Pankaj Patel

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    Dennis O'Keeffe

    @dennisokeeffe92
    • Melbourne, Australia

    Hi, I am a professional Software Engineer. Formerly of Culture Amp, UsabilityHub, Present Company and NightGuru.
    I am currently working on Visibuild.

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    Creating your first Stripe Charge with Python + Flask in 5 minutes

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