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I'm working with the PayPal REST API on the sandbox endpoint at https://api.sandbox.paypal.com/v1/ and nearly every single time I try to POST to payments/payment with a valid request (taking care not to be flagged as a duplicate attempt) it keeps returning a 503 error.

Only very occasionally does the request go through but it only did that earlier and now every request is failing with a 503 response. Even when I use PayPal's REST Playground at https://devtools-paypal.com/hateoas/index.html?interactive=ON&env=sandbox to build their sample template request I get the following response:

Response Header

HTTP Status Code : 503
{
  "date": "Tue, 26 Apr 2016 04:19:28 GMT",
  "server": "Apache",
  "proxy_server_info": "host=slcsbplatformapiserv3002.slc.paypal.com;threadId=876",
  "paypal-debug-id": "56fbd9db69555",
  "connection": "close",
  "set-cookie": [
    "X-PP-SILOVER=name%3DSANDBOX3.API.1%26silo_version%3D1880%26app%3Dplatformapiserv%26TIME%3D1357651543%26HTTP_X_PP_AZ_LOCATOR%3D; Expires=Tue, 26 Apr 2016 04:49:58 GMT; domain=.paypal.com; path=/; Secure; HttpOnly",
    "X-PP-SILOVER=; Expires=Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:01 GMT"
  ],
  "vary": "Authorization",
  "content-length": "145",
  "content-type": "application/json"
}

Response Body

{
  "name": "INTERNAL_SERVICE_ERROR",
  "information_link": "https://api.sandbox.paypal.com/docs/api/#INTERNAL_SERVICE_ERROR",
  "debug_id": "56fbd9db69555"
}

This is so incredibly annoying I can't stand it. Does anyone know if the sandbox site goes down from time to time? Has anyone run into this happening and realized they were doing something wrong in their request? Again, after I ran into the issue I tried submitting to the API using PayPal's very own example template in the REST Playground page.

Art Geigel
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1 Answers1

10

Regarding "INTERNAL_SERVICE_ERROR", in sandbox environment, the testing credit card in your API request is a generic one and there are lots of accounts attached to this credit card, when PayPal execute your API request, we need to load all the related accounts during transaction, so it caused time out error and internal service error, please try some rarely used card number, such as below:

VISA 16 digit

4916339731576481

4916037567876898

4024007171154213

4532782720397175

4556654893065114

4539432483175995

4716339122298416

4532325401406798

4539157680503828

4124138105007679

4485178251029161

4916231960500037

4058178241644969

Please have a try.

Zhao Samanta
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  • Thanks for the answer Zhao. I was using a test number from https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/vhelp/paypalmanager_help/credit_card_numbers.htm. Perhaps it's time to update that page (which is high on search results pages) to identify the issue I ran into. A tool to generate a fake credit card number would also be helpful to people too, I think, if they're trying to do what I was doing. – Art Geigel Apr 26 '16 at 13:51
  • @ZhaoSamanta : I'm running into this error trying to pull back a list of transactions or payment details for a previously made payment. Is there some resolution? – MyItchyChin Aug 11 '16 at 14:17