2012

Table Of Contents
Name-Value Pair API Developer Guide August 2012 23
PayPal Name-Value Pair API Basics
Responding to an NVP Response
1
Common Response Fields
The PayPal API always returns common fields in addition to fields that are specific to the
requested PayPal API operation.
A PayPal API response includes the following fields:
Error Responses
If the ACK value is not Success, API response fields may not be returned. An error response
has the following general format.
Format of an Error Response
Additional pass-through information may appear in the L_ERRORPARAMIDn and
L_ERRORPARAMVALUE
n fields. Consider the following error response:
TIMESTAMP=2011%2d11%2d15T20%3a27%3a02Z&CORRELATIONID=5be53331d9700&ACK=Fail
ure&VERSION=78%2e0&BUILD=000000&L_ERRORCODE0=15005&L_SHORTMESSAGE0=Processo
r%20Decline&L_LONGMESSAGE0=This%20transaction%20cannot%20be%20processed%2e&
L_SEVERITYCODE0=Error&L_ERRORPARAMI D0=ProcessorRespons e&L_ERRORPARAMVALUE0=
0051&AMT=10%2e40&CURRENCYCODE=USD&AVSCODE=X&CVV2MATCH=M
Field Description
ACK Acknowledgement status, which is one of the following values:
Success indicates a successful operation.
SuccessWithWarning indicates a successful operation; however, there are
messages returned in the response that you should examine.
Failure indicates the operation failed; the response also contains one or more error
messages explaining the failure.
FailureWithWarning indicates that the operation failed and that there are
messages returned in the response that you should examine.
CORRELATIONID Correlation ID, which uniquely identifies the transaction to PayPal.
TIMESTAMP The date and time that the requested API operation was performed.
VERSION The version of the API.
BUILD The sub-version of the API.
Response Fields on
Error
ACK=
notSuccess&TIMESTAMP=date/timeOfResponse&
CORRELATIONID=
debuggingToken&VERSION=VersionNo&
BUILD=
buildNumber&L_ERRORCODE0=errorCode&
L_SHORTMESSAGE0=
shortMessage&
L_LONGMESSAGE0=
longMessage&
L_SEVERITYCODE0=
severityCode
Multiple errors can be
returned. Each set of
errors has a different
numeric suffix, starting
with 0 and incremented
by one for each error.