2012

PayPal Name-Value Pair API Basics
Creating an NVP Request
1
20 August 2012 Name-Value Pair API Developer Guide
curl --insecure https://api-3t.sandbox.paypal.com/nvp -d ^
"METHOD=name^ &VERSION=XX.0^ &USER=API_username^ &PWD=API_password^
&SIGNATURE=API_signature^ &..."
NOTE: This example does not establish a secure connection and should not be used live on
paypal.com.
URL Encoding
All requests to execute PayPal API operations sent using HTTP must be URL-encoded. The
encoding ensures that you can transmit special characters, characters that are not allowed in a
URL, and characters that have special meaning in a URL, such as the equal sign and
ampersand.
The PayPal NVP API uses the HTTP protocol to send requests and receive responses from a
PayPal API server. You must encode all data sent using the HTTP protocol because data that is
not encoded could be misinterpreted as part of the HTTP protocol instead of part of the
request. Most programming languages provide a way to encode strings in this way. You should
consistently URL-encode the complete API request; otherwise, you may find that
unanticipated data causes an error.
NOTE: An HTTP form is automatically URL-encoded by most browsers.
For example, consider the following NVP string:
NAME=Robert Moore&COMPANY=R. H. Moore & Associates
It is encoded as follows:
NAME=Robert+Moore&COMPANY=R.+H.+Moore+%26+Associates
Use the following methods to URL-encode or URL-decode your NVP strings:
Encoding and decoding methods for URLs
Language Method
ASP.NET Encode System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlEncode(buffer,
Encoding.Default)
Decode System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlDecode(buffer,
Encoding.Default)
Classic ASP Encode Server.URLEncode
Decode No built-in function. Several implementation examples are available on the
Internet.
Java Encode java.net.URLEncoder.encode
Decode java.net.URLDecoder.decode