2007

Overview
Technical Details
12 April 2007 Name-Value Pair API Developer Guide and Reference
IMPORTANT: If you are using API signature, you must protect the API signature values in
your implementation. Consider storing these values in a secure location other
than your web server document root and setting the file permissions so that
only the system user that executes your ecommerce application can access it.
The sample code does not store these values securely. The sample code
should never be used in production.
N OTE: While API signature is recommended, you can also use API certificate.
Modify Your Code
In your application, change the following items from the PayPal Sandbox values to the live
PayPal server values:
z The server address in the URL. (See “Posting Using HTTPS” on page 16.)
z API credentials you set up in “Set Up API Credentials” on page 11.
Technical Details
This section describes details of the technologies used by the PayPal NVP API.
Request-Response Model
When you use the PayPal NVP API, you post an NVP request to PayPal, and PayPal posts
back an NVP response.
URL Format
The request and response are in URL-encoded format, which is defined by the Worldwide Web
Consortium (W3C). URL is defined as part of the URI specification. Find out more about URI
at
http://www.w3.org/Addressing/.
NVP Format
NVP is a way of specifying names and values in a string. NVP is the informal name for the
query in the URI specification. The NVP string is appended to the URL.
An NVP string conforms to the following guidelines:
z The name is separated from the value by an equal sign (=). For example:
FIRSTNAME=Robert
z Name-value pairs are separated by an ampersand (&). For example:
FIRSTNAME=Robert&MIDDLENAME=Herbert&LASTNAME=Moore
z The NVP string is URL-encoded.