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I'm in the the process of replacing the Free and Standard paypal button with a Express checkout integration. I believe I've done most of the work but I have 2 outstanding questions.

  1. When using the old button it redirected me to an order summary page where I could still update the quantity of the product I wanted to buy. With Express checkout it seems that this option has dissapeaed. Whilst the quantity field is still there, it's read-only and can therefore not be altered anymore. Can I make it so this field becomes editable again?

  2. When i get redirected to the paypal site after pressing submitting the form is not consistent, I suspect Paypal is in the process of rolling out some updates to this page and is doing some A/B testing to see which layout is performing better but it would be good if someone else could confirm a similiar behaviour and if there's anything that I can do to force a particular layout? I found other posts on this forum but they were posted a while ago hence the recheck.

Thanks

user3421555
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2 Answers2

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1.Express Checkout, its actually a API call to the PayPal server. If you want to edit the Quantity, you need to change the value L_PAYMENTREQUEST_n_QTYm using your own logic and send the request to PayPal(quantity is not editable).Doc

2.Actually PayPal has released a new Express Checkout layout.

There are two URL's here:

Old Layout : https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_express-checkout&token=EC-24P528268C112244W enter image description here

New Layout: https://www.paypal.com/checkoutnow/2?token=EC-24P528268C112244W enter image description here

You can force any layout as you wish.

Vimalnath
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  • Cool, so my thinking was right for the first part of my question, however for the checkout url the server always sends the request as https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_express-checkout&token=EC%2d6GY225742X303862F (the preferred layout) but then paypal occasionally redirects it to the new url structure and therefore the new layout. – user3421555 Mar 15 '14 at 12:46
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I discovered that you can force the old layout by including a "force_sa=true" param in your payment request url. Can't find this documented anywhere, but it seems to work consistently. I asked pp tech support about it and got this response:

The new express checkout layout is being gradually rolled out, you may have an option to force the layout with the following redirection url format: 'https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/checkoutnow/2?token=' to force the new checkout layout, it does the same way as force_sa=true

Didn't answer my question, but I guess they acknowledged it's a valid way to force a layout and not be at the mercy of their "rollout".

Alex
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    The parameter mentioned is not a recommended parameter; it's for debugging only and forces your transaction through a different stack, in turn affecting latency and reliability of the PayPal integration. I'd suggest deleting it to avoid confusing others. – Robert May 14 '15 at 15:42