Knowledge Base

E-commerce and PayPal

E-commerce and PayPal

Register Regular PayPal Account

For testing within ResourceSpace, register an account using a valid e-mail address. You can use an e-mail address created in addition to your regular business email address if you wish.

This account is a regular PayPal account. It will be referred to as the "primary" account.

Access the PayPal developer portal at https://developer.paypal.com/home

Login to the dashboard using the primary account.

The primary account will be used to access something known as the PayPal sandbox.

The PayPal sandbox is a special environment which allows test accounts to be setup for e-commerce.

When the sandbox is established, it is attached to the primary account.

It creates two sandbox accounts:-

(note that Paypal will also show the passwords it has automatically created for use when logging onto each of these sandbox accounts)

Personal account e-mail

The first is a "personal" sandbox account. It will have an initial "balance" of £5000.

sb-jilol6209311@personal.example.com

The personal account will belong to a ResourceSpace user who will be making resource purchases.

When the ResourceSpace user goes to the checkout, they are prompted to log onto their personal account, which resides in the sandbox.

On confirming the purchase, funds will be transferred from the personal account with a debit transaction.

Business account e-mail

The second of these is a "business" sandbox account. It also has an initial "balance" of £5000.

sb-1bd5u6207777@business.example.com

The business account, which is also in the sandbox, belongs to the organisation which owns the RS website.

Funds will be credited to the business account via the PayPal sandbox from RS users who have purchased resources.

Settings for personal account

There are no special settings required for the personal sandbox account.

Logging into the sandbox business account

You will need to log onto the PayPal business sandbox account in order to setup Instant Payment Notifications.

To do this, access the sandbox login page at https://www.sandbox.paypal.com

Once you have logged on, click on the account user name on the top right menu bar of the PayPal sandbox page and click the Account settings option.

Business Sandbox Account Settings

From Account settings, click on the Notifications option on the left of the page.

The page will now display the Notifications section

Now click the Update option next to Instant Payment Notifications

From Edit Instant Payment Notification (IPN) settings, set the notification url to the following:-

https://yourdomain/pages/purchase_callback.php

Now click the radio button option Receive IPN messages (Enabled)

And finally click the Save button.

This will ensure that your ResourceSpace purchasers get timely access to their resources following payment.

Switching PayPal From Sandbox To Production

This involves the following :-

• Preparing your production business PayPal account to receive payments
• You are going to use exactly the same steps you took in the sandbox,
  but this time you log on with your production business PayPal account and you do not access the sandbox.
• Switching the business sandbox account to your production business PayPal account You will need to change your configuration to point to production PayPal.

You can always comment out your sandbox configuration lines to enable you to switch to sandbox testing whenever required.