Integration Guide

HTML Form Basics for Website Payments Standard
Specifying the Kind of Payment Button – cmd
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338 September 2008 Website Payments Standard Integration Guide
Specifying the Kind of Payment Button – cmd
The cmd variable is always required in a FORM. Its value determines which Website Payments
Standard checkout experience you are using to obtain payment.
The input tag looks like one of the following:
z Buy Now buttons – <INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
z Donate buttons – <INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations">
z Subscribe buttons – <INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick-
subscriptions">
z Shopping cart buttons – <INPUT TYPE="hidden" name="cmd" value="_cart">
IMPORTANT: These INPUT tags are required exactly as shown above. Do not alter them.
Variations on Basic Variables
This section highlights some useful miscellaneous ideas about Website Payments Standard
FORM variables.
The HTML variables interact in various ways. Sometimes their effect is cumulative,
sometimes they can cancel each other out, sometimes a variable requires that you also set
another variable. These interactions are detailed in the descriptions of the variables in
Appendix A, “HTML Variables for Website Payments Standard” and Appendix B, “Address
Handling (U.S. Merchants Only).”
Record Keeping with Passthrough Variables
Some variables are exclusively for your own use, such as order management.PayPal returns
the values that you send through Instant Payment Notification exactly as you sent them. For
TABLE 11.1 Allowed Values for cmd Variable
Value of cmd Description
_xclick The button that the person clicked was a Buy Now button
_donations The button that the person clicked was a Donate button
_xclick-subscriptions The button that the person clicked was a Subscribe button.
_cart For shopping cart purchases; these additional variables specify the
kind of shopping cart button or command:
z add – Add to Cart buttons
z display – View Cart buttons
z upload – The Cart Upload command