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Name-Value Pair API Developer Guide 08 April 2009 13
PayPal NVP API Overview
Taking Your Application Live
3. Post the NVP request to the PayPal Sandbox as described in “Posting Using HTTPS” on
page 18.
Interpret the Response
PayPal processes your request and posts back a reponse in NVP format. Add code to your web
application to do the following tasks:
1. Receive the HTTP post response, and extract the NVP string.
2. URL-decode the parameter values as described in “URL-Encoding” on page 14.
3. Take appropriate action for successful and failed reponses.
Taking Your Application Live
After you have finished coding and testing your application, deploy your application to the
live PayPal server using your PayPal business account and API credentials for that account.
Set Up a PayPal Business Account
When you are ready to deploy your application to the live PayPal server, create a PayPal
business account on
https://www.paypal.com.
Set Up API Credentials
To use the APIs, you need a set of credentials to identify yourself to PayPal. Create an API
signature for your business account.
For instructions on setting up API credentials for the business account, go to
https://www.paypal.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_certificate.html.
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.
NOTE: 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: