Registration Codes/Server Verification & Joomla

Question

This question can be broken up into a couple of parts:

1. What is the best way to create a registration key for a product in PHP (ie. a person purchases a PHP program and after payment receives an activation key)
2. I want to be able to store the registration keys on my server (Joomla) and associate the key with my existing users. Then the PHP program would check with the server to verify if the key is correct. What would be the best method to do this?

I've tried researching this problem, and I just keep coming up short. I know that Joomla has a built in XML-RPC plugin but have absolutely no idea how to operate it from inside a component.

Any help is greatly appreciated

Answer 1

"(ie. a person purchases a PHP program and after payment receives an activation key)"

When they purchase the program you will hand over the source code as well, so you cant stop them from changing the code too :)

What you can do is build your service around the "Software As A Service (SAAS)" model. Have a look at it and see if that helps