User's Manual

Merchant User Manual and Integration Guide May, 2005 145
B
IPN and PDT Variables
IPN and PDT variables are case-sensitive. All values are lowercase, except those for
payment_status, which have an initial capital letter.
Data Type. IPN posts contain only alphanumeric characters.
Maximum Field Lengths. The maximum field length for each returned field is 127
characters, with the exception of the custom and memo fields, which have a maximum length
of 255 characters. The unique PayPal Transaction ID is 17 characters long.
URL Encoding. Values posted by IPN are URL-encoded. For example, the colon “:” in
"http://" is translated to %3A in the IPN post.
About These Tables of Variables
The tables in this appendix group IPN variables by different characteristics:
z “IPN Variables in All Posts” on page 146
z “Buyer Information” on page 146
z “Advanced and Custom Information” on page 148
z “Shopping Cart Information” on page 148
z “Currency and Currency Exchange” on page 152“Auctions” on page 153
z “Mass Payment” on page 154
z “Dispute Notification Variables” on page 160
z “Dispute Notification Variables” on page 160
z “PDT-Specific Variables” on page 162
Transaction-Specifc Variable Values. Unless otherwise indicated in the table column
labeled Possible Values, the value of an IPN or PDT variable is always specific to the
transaction whose information is being posted.
test_ipn Variable in Sandbox
In the Sandbox environment, IPN includes the additional variable test_ipn with a
value of
1 (one). The purpose of test_ipn is to provide testing programs a means to
differentiate between Sandbox IPN and live IPN.