php - Stripe Plan, Customer, Subscription creation. Doesn't it create duplicates?

i'm building a payment flow using Stripe. The payment will result in a Subscription using Stripe APIs, but there is something I don't understand. Every tutorial includes first creating a Plan using stripe APIs, then a Customer, then the Subscription with the plan and customer responses.

My question is, do I need to send to Stripe the Plan and the Customer every time i submit a new subscription? More likely the Plan. There is just 1 plan and it never changes. If I send a new Plan (which is always the same) to stripe every time, doesn't it complain about it? Is this really the right way to do it? Or maybe I should send a plan just one time, save the returned ID and send that for subsequent subscriptions.

Fast demo about what every example i found is doing:

$customer = \Stripe\Customer::create(array( 
            'email' => $email, 
            'source'  => $token 
           )); 

$plan = \Stripe\Plan::create(array( 
                "product" => [ 
                    "name" => $planName 
                ], 
                "amount" => $priceCents, 
                "currency" => $currency, 
                "interval" => $planInterval, 
                "interval_count" => 1 
            ));
    
$subscription = \Stripe\Subscription::create(array( 
                    "customer" => $customer->id, 
                    "items" => array( 
                        array( 
                            "plan" => $plan->id, 
                        ), 
                    ), 
                )); 
Copy code

So as you can see Plan and Customer gets created for every subscription. What if I already sent that plan to Stripe during the last subscription activation?

Didn't find the answer?

Our community is visited by hundreds of web development professionals every day. Ask your question and get a quick answer for free.