In this episode, we tackle the problem where refreshing the payments page or navigating back and forth creates multiple incomplete Payment Intents in Stripe for the same user. This is a common issue that can lead to a cluttered Stripe dashboard and potentially confusing scenarios during payment processing.
We start by taking a closer look at the current behavior: each visit or refresh creates a new Payment Intent, which is not ideal. To improve this flow, we update the controller logic so that when a user lands on the payments page, we first check if there's already a Payment Intent stored in the session. If one exists, we reuse it—instead of creating a new one every time. If there isn't one yet, we create a new Payment Intent and store its ID in the session for future use.
The video walks through changing the controller code, using session helpers to store and retrieve the Payment Intent ID, and testing the logic by clearing sessions and cookies. This way, the same Payment Intent is reused for that user's session unless they clear their cookies or session storage.
By the end, we've successfully prevented duplicated Payment Intents, ensuring every user only has one open intent until they're done with the payment flow. This makes the payment process much cleaner and avoids extra clutter in your Stripe account.