PayPal Direct Payment

I've successfully got Gravity Forms working with PaPal Payment Pro/ Recurring payments. I'm using the PayPal Framework plugin.

I'm using the gform_after_submission hook to send the request

then I need to get the ipn data and process the success or failure. this is the part I'm having trouble with. I found this answer here: http://www.gravityhelp.com/forums/topic/validation-confirmation-messages

And was wondering if that would be the best/only way to go. I would really like to be able to process and display the result data. I was also thinking I could have a hidden field in the entry table and just store a serialized array there and then redirect on success and use the entry id?

There is the response from the direct call, and then the response after with the ipn, so I would really like to be able to store both and access the ipn success fail.

I do have the PayPal addon, and have used it , but wasn't able to do it this time because I needed to be able to set the recurring start date.

If you could help that be awesome, I think this would also be great for others in the future looking for this functionality.

I actually used the PayPal addon and the authorize addon to build my own version. I didn't have enough time to do it as elegantly as you would but it does work! :P

As mentioned in an additional forum question, making the credit card field splittable into first/lastname would be super helpful and I would guess necessary for PayPal Pro.