CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phppaypalpaypal-sandboxexpress-checkoutpaypal-nvp
Jeff Sible
Jeff Sible

Reputation: 63

PayPal Sandbox Classic API Express Checkout NVP Internal Server Error (500)

Quick Summary:

I'm developing an e-commerce site using PHP. It uses PayPal to make payments. I have been successfully using (from sending the request string via SetExpressCheckout to DoExpressCheckoutPayment to GetExpressCheckoutDetails to storing payment details in the MySQL database) PayPal's Sandbox mode with their Classic API Express Checkout (NVP) from sometime late last year till now. It was all working fine until last night and no major changes have been made to the PayPal section of the site. Now I get an "Internal Server Error" at https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_express-checkout&token=[TOKEN] on every payment request.

Walkthrough:

What I see:

Paypal SetExpressCheckout return:

Array
(
    [TOKEN] => XX-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
    [TIMESTAMP] => 2015-03-28T20:27:25Z
    [CORRELATIONID] => XXXXXXXXXXXXX
    [ACK] => Success
    [VERSION] => 109.0
    [BUILD] => 15840636
)

PayPal Sandbox error message at link listed above:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Why I can't find an answer:

Upvotes: 6

Views: 2098

Answers (2)

Philip Koury
Philip Koury

Reputation: 70

After reporting this issue with a log to PayPal they responded by confirming this is a known issue on their end.

Dear Philip,

Thank you for contacting PayPal Merchant Technical Services about the internal server error on the sandbox environment. This is a known issue currently that is being investigated and hopefully will be resolved soon. I will let you know when I have confirmation the issue is fixed. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Mike

Merchant Technical Support

PayPal, an eBay Company

Update from PayPal:

Dear Philip, The Sandbox issue should be resolved now and you should not be seeing the Internal Server 500 error. If you haave any other issues please let us know, https://www.paypal.com/mts

Sincerely,

Mike

Merchant Technical Support

PayPal, an eBay Company

I've tested and it does appear to be fixed.

Upvotes: 2

geewiz
geewiz

Reputation: 2206

Internal Server Error means internal to the PayPal server. This is PayPal's "Help! I give up!" error message.

This does not rule out the possibility that there is something you have done wrong that has lead PayPal's code off the green path and into the woods where it was eaten by a bear, but regardless: do as the error page says and contact PayPal support. They should be able to look up your correlation ID and see what happened. Then they can let you know whether you can work around the issue by making a change on your end or whether your code is all good and it is 100% their issue. And then they can improve their code so that the next person who may make an error similar to yours gets better feedback.

(Although in the case of a page such as this that is normally displayed to your customer, not to you, PayPal generally gives only a relatively generic failure message.)

And a few other things I would check if you want to work on this a bit more while you wait for PayPal to get back to you: you verified that the API seems to actually be working as it claims. Sensible thing to check, but the error is on the web redirect so focus on that: what do you get if you pass a known-bogus token? WHat happens on another computer or after you clear your cookies? What do you get if you try to do a button payment (not express checkout) with the same pair of accounts?

Upvotes: 2

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