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Comment by AlchemistCamp | Hacker News Reader

I really wish Stripe would either support Elixir or drastically improve the quality of their docs.

As it is, every guide I see assumes the use of one of their few officially supported languages.

It doesn't have to be that way. For a web API, the strings sent back and forth in HTTP requests and responses can be generated by any server-side language.

Edit: Here is an example, the first guide linked from that page: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-payment?integratio...

As you'll notice there's a toggle for language in Step 1 "Set up Stripe". The options are: Ruby Python PHP Java Node Go .NET. Note that CURL is not an option. The entire guide presupposes you're using one of 6 languages Stripe has blessed.

This has been the case for every guide on every similar Stripe product announcement I've seen shared here over the past year and a half.

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Not sure exactly what you're asking for based on the comment. Just an official Elixir library? The docs have raw curl requests in addition to the languages, which just show the HTTP method, url, and raw params–those can be thrown into any HTTP request library that Elixir might have.

> drastically improve the quality of their docs

You've got to be kidding, right?

> As you'll notice there's a toggle for language in Step 1 "Set up Stripe". The options are: Ruby Python PHP Java Node Go .NET. Note that CURL is not an option. The entire guide presupposes you're using one of 6 languages Stripe has blessed.

That example you cited is about installing dependencies for the languages. You don't need to install an additional dependency to run a curl command. I've looked over the documentation you've cited in other posts and the only times it seems to omit curl requests is when you aren't required to make a request for the checkout flow.

While asking for specific documentation and language support for elixir is a reasonable request, it seems a bit unfair to claim their documentation doesn't provide enough information to roll your own interface.

The documentation does provide enough information to roll your own, but it's buried. Notably, the newer "guides" seem to assume everyone is using one of their official libraries.

Here's an example of something you'll need to know for subscriptions or anything else involving webhooks: https://stripe.com/docs/webhooks/signatures#verify-manually

How many clicks is it going to take you from the subscriptions page of the docs to get there? You know it exists, which is already a big leg up, but I suspect it will take a while.

To be clear, my site is integrated with Stripe. A lot of Elixir users in my audience have had a rough go of it, though.

> drastically improve the quality of their docs

Hey, I'm an engineer on the Docs Product team at Stripe. Thanks for the feedback about Elixir; if you have other ideas about how we can improve the docs, I'd love to hear them! Feel free to email me at nkohari@stripe.com.

I use a less popular language too, but I’m fine looking at their Curl examples.

There is no CURL example in the guide I linked (or this guide linked on the same page).

https://stripe.com/docs/billing/subscriptions/fixed-price

Your first link does include curl examples for everything except for the instructions for downloading the client libraries and for the frontend examples. This has already been pointed out to you in another comment, so I'm not sure why you're persisting with your claim.

Granted, your second link doesn't include curl examples.

The link I shared at the top of the thread, which was the very first guide linked, doesn't have CURL examples.

Here's the link again if you'd like to check for yourself: https://stripe.com/docs/payments/accept-a-payment?integratio...

> It's a web API and the strings sent back and forth in HTTP requests and responses can be generated by any serverside language.

And Elixir doesn't handle that well? Or it's hard to translate examples written in other languages to Elixir? (I don't use Elixir so I'm not grasping the problem.)

Elixir's great at that stuff. I wrote a wrapper library for the specific functionality I needed, basically just building up from Plug.Conn.Query.encode/1.

> Or it's hard to translate examples written in other languages to Elixir?

Well, the first line, "gem install stripe" is a bit tough to translate into a language that doesn't have an official Stripe library :)

The issue is that the official library does things behind the scenes that the guides don't mention (such as setting up headers, tokens for webhooks, etc).

I’ve had a lot of success with https://hex.pm/packages/stripity_stripe.

The cURL docs tell you what data is being sent and how. You don't have to use cURL.

And yes, only the six most popular webdev languages. Monsters.

> drastically improve the quality of their docs.

This is surprising, I've always found their docs to be world class. Their API reference site is especially nice. What have you found lacking other than the Elixir library?

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