GraphQL: Adding Subscription Pricing With Stripe

Problem

We want to allow users to purchase a Premium subscription to our app, to be billed monthly.

Solution

We can use Stripe to:

• Tokenize the user’s payment method on the client.

• Accept the token on our backend

• Create a Customer in Stripe

• Subscribe that Customer to our Product

Implementation

Stripe Dashboard

• Create a new Product

• Create a new Pricing Plan for that Product

  • We’ll need the Plan ID (eg. plan_FLyf9o01u2bJZU)

GraphQL

Schema

Update our updateRole mutation to accept a stripeToken

updateRole(newRole: Role!, stripeToken: String): User!

Resolver

updateRole needs to do a series of things, in order:

1. Create a Customer in Stripe

	stripe.customers.create({
	description: `Customer for ${me.email}`,
	email: me.email,
	source: stripeToken
	});

view raw stripe_customers_create.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub

2. Create a Subscription in Stripe for that Customer

	stripe.subscriptions.create({
	customer: customer.id,
	items: [{ plan: "plan_FLyf9o01u2bJZU" }]
	});

view raw stripe_subscriptions_create.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub

3. Update the user’s role in the database

	const result = await models.User.update(
	{
	// what to update:
	role: newRole
	},
	{
	// where to update
	where: { id: me.id },
	// options
	returning: true, // return data after db update
	plain: true // don't return extra stuff
	}
	);
	// result is an array with [affectedRows, data]. We want the data (user);
	const updatedUser = result[1]; // return this later

view raw resolvers_user.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub

4. Reset the cookie so the JWT includes the new role

	const token = await createToken(updatedUser, process.env.APP_SECRET);
	res.cookie("token", token, {
	httpOnly: true,
	maxAge: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365,
	});

view raw resolvers_user.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub

5. Return the updated user from our resolver

return updatedUser;

Putting it all together

Here’s the code for the resolver in full. It’s pretty long-winded in it’s first iteration, but it gets the job done. Later we’ll want to add more code to handle different cases.

	{
	Mutation: {
	updateRole: async (
	parent,
	{ newRole, stripeToken },
	{ models, me, res }
	) => {
	if (!me) {
	throw new Error("Please log in first");
	}
	// TODO: If newRole === db.user.role, "you already have a {newRole} account."
	if ((newRole === "PREMIUM")) {
	// 1. Create a customer
	const customerReturn = stripe.customers.create(
	{
	description: `Customer for ${me.email}`,
	email: me.email,
	source: stripeToken
	},
	function(err, customer) {
	// asynchronously called
	console.log("err: ", err);
	if (customer) {
	console.log("customer: ", customer);
	// Create the subscription and attempt payment.
	stripe.subscriptions.create(
	{
	customer: customer.id,
	items: [{ plan: "plan_FLyf9o01u2bJZU" }]
	},
	function(err, subscription) {
	// asynchronously called
	if (err) {
	console.log("err: ", err);
	}
	if (subscription) {
	console.log("subscription: ", subscription);
	}
	}
	);
	}
	}
	);
	console.log("customerReturn: ", customerReturn);
	// Update the DB user role
	const result = await models.User.update(
	{
	// what to update:
	role: newRole
	},
	{
	// where to update
	where: { id: me.id },
	// options
	returning: true, // return data after db update
	plain: true // don't return extra stuff
	}
	);
	// result is an array with [affectedRows, data]. We want the data (user);
	const updatedUser = result[1]; // return this at the end
	// reset the cookie, now with jwt containing updated user role
	const token = await createToken(updatedUser, process.env.APP_SECRET);
	res.cookie("token", token, {
	httpOnly: true,
	maxAge: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365 // 1 year cookie
	});
	// return user
	return updatedUser;
	}
	if ((newRole = "BASIC")) {
	// Update Stripe
	// Update DB
	}
	}
	},
	}
	}

view raw resolvers_user.js hosted with ❤ by GitHub