Hack 87 Set up the Sandbox 
Create phony accounts and use phony money to
test your API code, all without spending a dime.
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Go to http://paypalhacks.com for downloadable code and API updates.
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PayPal Developer Central includes an environment called the PayPal
Sandbox, in which you can test your PayPal Web Services applications,
as well as IPN and PDT features (discussed in Chapter 7). The Sandbox looks and behaves like the
PayPal web site, with one important exception: no real money is
transacted. You can create and access multiple test accounts in the
Sandbox, which means that you can create both a business and a buyer
account without the hassle of setting up real email, credit card, and
bank accounts.
Before PayPal created its Sandbox, you would have had to create two
real PayPal accounts and use real money to test your code. There was
no way to get around this, but you could send test payments in
pennies—$0.01 for a widget or $0.02 for a gumball—and
then refund the transactions immediately thereafter. As you can
imagine, this process quickly became burdensome. Although some
companies (such as Eliteweaver) offered good IPN-testing solutions,
ultimately nothing was able to replace the comfort of knowing that
your code worked against the real thing.
8.3.1 Creating a Sandbox Account
Creating a Sandbox PayPal account is similar to
creating a live PayPal account. The web pages look and behave almost
identically. Here's how to do it:
Log into Developer Central with your new developer account and click
the Sandbox tab. Click the Create Account link, at which point a familiar page
appears: the PayPal sign-up page. |
It might be a little jarring to see the PayPal account sign-up page,
but if you look to the top-left corner, you'll see a
PayPal Sandbox logo, verifying that you did swallow the blue pill and
are indeed working within a simulated PayPal environment.
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To create a business account, select the Business Account option. Select your country
and click the Continue button. On the next page, enter any existing address and phone number. This
information never leaves the Sandbox, so the information you enter
here makes little difference. Click the Continue button when
you're done. On the Enter Your Information page, type an email address and
password. To make it easy on yourself, use a simple email address
such as business@mysite.com and an
easy-to-remember password such as qwertyui. You
don't have to use a real email account, because the
Sandbox emails never leave the Sandbox. |
Real currency is not involved when using the Sandbox, so there
isn't much of a security issue. You might choose to
use the same password for every Sandbox account you create. Having to
manage multiple passwords is pointless and can slow down your
development team.
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You also need to provide answers to two security questions. Again,
this information never leaves the Sandbox. Enter something obvious,
such as your own last name, for Mother's Maiden Name
and the city you work in for City of Birth. Finally, enter the
Security Measure characters and click the Sign-up button. Next, you will be asked to confirm your email address. But before you
do, repeat steps 1 through 6 to create a second Sandbox account, from
which you can send test payments. To create a buyer account, select
Personal Account (instead of Business
Account) in step 3. You'll be asked fewer questions
this time. |
You might want to create both types of personal accounts (Standard
and Premier) to mimic the different types of PayPal users who will be
buying things from your site. To create a Premier account, answer Yes
when asked "Would you like this to be a Premier
Account?"
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Once both your Business and Personal accounts are set up, they will
appear under the Sandbox tab, as shown in Figure 8-2. For each account you create, you will see the
email address, the account type, the country in which the account is
registered, the account balance and currency, and whether the account
is confirmed and verified.
8.3.2 Confirming Your Sandbox Email Addresses
Just
as you would on the live PayPal
site, you must confirm your newly created PayPal Sandbox accounts
before you use them. Normally, PayPal would send a real email to a
newly added email address for confirmation, but email sent on behalf
of pseudo-accounts would be confusing, to the say the least. So, for
security and other reasons, PayPal's Developer
Central web site includes a self-contained pseudo-email-messaging
system to catch and display emails generated by the PayPal Sandbox.
To view these emails, log into the Developer Central web site and
click the Email tab. A list of emails from PayPal to your various
accounts will be displayed here. Click the subject link of any email
to open the email message, as shown in Figure 8-3.
To confirm your Sandbox account:
Copy the URL from the Activate Your PayPal Account email. Open a new browser window, paste the URL into your
browser's address bar, and press Enter. Enter the password for your account and click Submit.
You will need to follow this process for every new Sandbox account
you've created.
8.3.3 Verifying Bank Accounts in the Sandbox
PayPal
uses bank accounts to verify [Hack #2]
that their members are who they say they are.
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Bank accounts are also used to add and withdraw funds [Hack #20] .
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Adding a bank account to a Sandbox account is relatively
straightforward and has the added bonus of instantly making you
rich—at least in the world of the PayPal Sandbox.
To add a bank account to your PayPal Sandbox account:
Log into the Sandbox with your business account and click Add Bank
Account on the My Account/Overview page. The Add Bank Account page will be conveniently pre-populated with a
fake bank account number. Add a name for the account and click Add
Account. Be sure to make note of the account numbers used for the
bank account, because you will need them in the future to add
multiple users or enable other features. |
At the time of this writing, the Sandbox displays this account number
only once: at the moment of its creation. So, write it down
somewhere, because you won't see it again. One way
to remind yourself of this bank account information is to use the
routing number and bank account as part of the account name (e.g.,
BofA-325272157_10448249836185934481). If you do
forget the account numbers, you might want to abandon this Sandbox
account and open another.
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At this point, PayPal would normally make two small deposits into
your pseudo-account and then ask you to confirm the amounts that were
deposited. However, since the account numbers and the corresponding
accounts are fake, you won't be able to visit your
bank's web site to get the information [Hack #2].
Instead, PayPal provides an easy way to accomplish this step right on
the site. Click the Get Verified link on the My Account/Overview page
to view the Get Verified page. On the Get Verified page, click "Add and confirm a
checking account" to be taken to the Confirm Bank
Account page. Select the bank account you would like to confirm and
click Submit. Click Continue when you see "Your U.S.
Bank Account Has Been Confirmed."
Repeat this process for your buyer account.
8.3.4 Adding Funds (and Getting Rich Quick)
When you've verified all your accounts, the last
step is to put some
money in your
Personal (buyer) account.
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You do not have to add funds to your account before making a payment,
because PayPal will let you fund payments from your fake bank account
or fake credit card, just as in real life.
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To add funds, log into the Sandbox with your Sandbox buyer account,
and from the My Account tab, click Add Funds. Click the Transfer
Funds from a Bank Account link and follow the instructions. You need
to put some money into your Personal account only, since
that's the account from which
you'll be making your pseudopayments.
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The transaction will be held as Pending until you actually view the
details of the transaction and click Clear Transaction or Fail
Transaction. For the purposes of this hack, select Clear Transaction
here.
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This might be the most fun of all the things mentioned in this book,
because you can, on a whim, transfer any amount of money into your
account and become a pseudomillionaire in seconds! (And you thought
this was going to be about the coding!)
--Rob Conery and Dave Nielsen
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