Using Laravel Dusk to download Paddle payout PDFs

This project uses Laravel Dusk to log into Paddle's web interface, navigate to the payouts page, and download the available PDF files for payouts.

I use these payout PDFs for accounting purposes by syncing them as invoices to my accounting software. Since this process only happens once a month, it might not seem like a big task. However, if you manage multiple Paddle accounts for different products, it can quickly take several hours each month to complete. So, let's automate it!

Commands used after a clean laravel project setup

composer require laravel/dusk

When prompted, don't rerun with --dev if you want to run this in production and not just in your local/testing environments.

php artisan dusk:install

This command will download the Chromium browser driver.

Note: Laravel Dusk requires a browser to be installed on the system where it runs. So make sure to install the google-chrome-stable package on the machine that will execute this process.

Laravel Dusk code to download Paddle payouts

The core functionality of this project resides in: tests/Browser/PaddleDownloadPayoutPdfTest.php

Here's what it does:

• Fetches the available PaddleAccount records (create at least one before running the script).
• Logs into the Paddle dashboard, navigates to the Payouts page, and retrieves the available payouts.
• Uses the downloadPdf function to download and store the PDFs for "US" and "RoW" invoices in storage/app/private/paddle_invoices/.
• Extracts the total amounts from the PDFs using the PdfToText package and the extractTotalAmountFromPdfText function.
• Creates or updates the PaddlePayout records in the database.

Running the test

php artisan dusk

After running the test, you’ll have PaddlePayout records and the corresponding PDFs at your disposal!