The customer object is an important component of the Braintree gateway. Use customers to store and organize payment methods. A single customer can have multiple payment methods.

This guide will walk you through the basics. See Customer Request and Customer Response references for complete details.

Create

Use Customer: Create to add new customers.

You can create just a customer without an associated payment method, and the operation will be successful if all customer validations pass:

Ruby 
result = gateway.customer.create(
  :first_name => "Jen",
  :last_name => "Smith",
  :company => "Braintree",
  :email => "jen@example.com",
  :phone => "312.555.1234",
  :fax => "614.555.5678",
  :website => "www.example.com"
)
if result.success?
  puts result.customer.id
else
  p result.errors
end

Create with payment method

You can also create a customer with an associated payment method:

Ruby 
result = gateway.customer.create(
  :first_name => "Charity",
  :last_name => "Smith",
  :payment_method_nonce => nonce_from_the_client
)
if result.success?
  puts result.customer.id
  puts result.customer.payment_methods[0].token
else
  p result.errors
end

Success depends on both customer validations and payment method validations, and whether the payment method is verified (if card verification is enabled).

note

Braintree strongly recommends verifying all cards before they are stored in your Vault by enabling card verification for your entire account in the Control Panel. If you choose to manually verify cards, set verify_card to true.

See the reference and more examples of creating a customer.

Update

Use Customer: Update to update an existing customer:

Ruby 
result = gateway.customer.update(
  "a_customer_id", # id of customer to update
  :first_name => "New First Name",
  :last_name => "New Last Name"
)
if result.success?
  puts "customer successfully updated"
else
  p result.errors
end

If the customer can't be found, it will raise a Braintree::NotFoundError.

See the reference and more examples of updating a customer.

Find

Use Customer: Find to find a customer by ID:

Ruby 
customer = gateway.customer.find("a_customer_id")

If the customer can't be found, it will raise a Braintree::NotFoundError.

The return value of this call will be a Customer response object.

Delete

Use Customer: Delete to delete a customer and its payment methods using the customer's ID:

Ruby 
result = gateway.customer.delete("the_customer_id")
if result.success?
  puts "customer successfully deleted"
end

If the customer can't be found, it will raise a Braintree::NotFoundError.