Intermittent failure to create GiveWP records via PayPal Donations Gateway

[peal333]

Title: Intermittent Failure: PayPal Donations Gateway fails to create GiveWP donation records.

User Story
As a donor, I expect to receive an automated email receipt immediately following a successful PayPal transaction.

Problem Statement
A subset of successful PayPal transactions are failing to trigger the GiveWP database entry creation. Because no record is created in the wp_give_forms (or relevant) tables, no automated emails are dispatched, requiring manual CSV imports to rectify.

Observed Behavior

• Transaction Status: Successful in PayPal Dashboard.
• GiveWP Status: No record created (not even in 'Pending' state).
• Email Status: Not sent.
• Frequency: Estimated at 5% of total transactions.

Technical Observations & Hypotheses

• Data Integrity: The issue is not a failure of the email service, but a possible failure of the PayPal Donations Gateway integration. I checked all database tables and no tables are corrupted. Website is hosted on Siteground with cron setup to run every 15 minutes so reachability should not be an issue.
• Nonce Expiration: Investigated potential nonce expiration due to session timeouts but the issue persists.
• Environment: Potential correlation with mobile browser redirects, though not yet confirmed via logs.

Steps to Reproduce
Currently non-reproducible in a staging environment.

Requested Investigation

1. Why donation records are not being created at all even when a PayPal donation is successfully made.

Attachments

• [Attached Code: Nonce fix attempt]

givewp-nonce-checker.php

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open 45 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 14 additional days. Note, if this Issue is reporting a bug, please reach out to our support at https://givewp.com/support. If this is a feature request, please see our feedback board at feedback.givewp.com — that’s the best place to make feature requests, unless you’re providing a PR.

[arocha-tech]

We're seeing the same issue as well - a successful PayPal subscription and charge that's visible in PayPal's logs, but doesn't show up in GiveWP.