Can I test paypal api's from localhost - php

Question

UPDATE 1:
According to this tutorial on Using PayPal's Instant Payment Notification with PHP, PayPal cannot access locally hosted websites unless certain router ports are opened. Is this because the website is about IPN or is this true for all PayPal APIs?
ORIGINAL QUESTION:
On my laptop, I have a LAMP environment setup, when I use the http://localhost to create website before going live.
For a new project, I need to use the PayPal APIs. Will I be able to use the localhost to test the PayPal APIs if I connect my laptop to the internet? Or will I have to upload my website to a LAMP host elsewhere?
You're probably thinking, what a stupid question, just try it to see if it works. I have tried it and it's not working and I wanted to rule out this question before going onto the next step.

Answer 1

If you want to debug your IPN code, you'll need to make your server publicly available in some way. This is so PayPal can asynchronously post back to your server at a later time after you've submitted your request. Usually this is pretty quick I think (within 15 seconds) but it could be longer.
One easy way I've found to make a development server available publicly is to use a tunneling solution from this list, like boringproxy. This allows you to continue to develop in your IDE like normal, running your code in debug mode. When PayPal posts back to your endpoint, you can debug it right there in your IDE. These services wrap this up for you, so it's very easy to do without any technical know how.
From my understanding, this is done using a "reverse SSH tunnel" which allows your site to be made public by proxying it through a server that's already publicly available. Note that before you do this, you have to consider that not just PayPal can hit your site once it's made public, but anyone can, so please take that into consideration first.
Also, if you've got your own public facing domain and don't mind playing around in a terminal with SSH, you can supposedly do something like this shell script (copied from this gist)
# Usage: show <local-port> <subdomain>
function show() {
DOMAIN=".yourdomain.com"
REMOTE="$2$DOMAIN"
ssh -tR 1080:127.0.0.1:$1 vps "sudo ssh -Nl \$USER -L $REMOTE:80:127.0.0.1:1080 localhost"
}
To get this to work as above, you'd need to put the following in your ~/.ssh/config file:
Host vps
HostName <server address>
User <server username>
If you don't want to (or can't) do this, then the following will work:
SERVERUSER="<server username>"
ssh -l $SERVERUSER -tR 1080:127.0.0.1:$1 <server address> "sudo ssh -Nl \$SERVERUSER -L $REMOTE:80:127.0.0.1:1080 localhost"

Answer 2

If http://localhost doesn't validate use http://127.0.0.1

Answer 3

One simple solution is described in the official developers page of PayPal:
developer.paypal.com - Local IPN Testing
The trick consists on writing a small HTML file with this content:
<form target="_new" method="post" action="https://www.YourDomain.com/Path/YourIPNHandler.php">
<!-- start example variables: -->
<input type="hidden" name="SomePayPalVar" value="SomeValue1"/>
<input type="hidden" name="SomeOtherPPVar" value="SomeValue2"/>
<!-- /end example variables -->
<input type="submit"/>
</form>
To get the real results you need to copy all of the IPN variables which PayPal sends.
These real variables can be found into the PayPal account, under IPN History:
IPNs History
You need to click on the relative Message ID and then copy the "IPN Message" content (it will be something like mc_gross=27.00&invoice=Test-1&protection_eligibility=Ineligible&...) which must be converted into HTML hidden input fields.
For example:
<input type="hidden" name="mc_gross" value="27.00"/>
<input type="hidden" name="invoice" value="Test-1"/>
<input type="hidden" name="protection_eligibility" value="Ineligible"/>
....
After setting up all of these variables and changing the action URL, you can open the file with a browser and then submit this form.

Answer 4

It should work.
I have made a payment integration with paypal last year, and it worked on localhost without problems.
Are you using the paypal sandbox for development?
https://developer.paypal.com/

Answer 5

It should work without a problem, however it might get picky if you send in "invalid URLs" for return urls and IPN message urls. Meaning, sending in http://localhost/cancelpaypal.php as cancelURL might tell you that it is an invalid url.
I do however don't think it should.
Having to open up router ports would only be needed for IPN, because the redirect in the normal flow is a regular "Location:" header hence it is your browser that needs to be able to access the site (localhost)

Answer 6

Well, it most works, but also, you can setup a temporary local dns entry.
All you have to do is:
open your /etc/hosts
add a new entry: yourwebsite.com 127.0.0.1
So when your browser query for the website will be fetched from your 127.0.0.1, somethings your need to flush dns( /etc/init.d/nscd restart).
and that is it all, but remember to remove the entry when you are ready for production.

Answer 7

To use IPN your localhost has to be accessed from the web. One solution that definitly works is to use a virtual Machine, install VPN-Server, connect your Clinet via VPN and manage virtual host to redirect to your local IP-adress. That way, if you turn on VPN your server can be accessed from outside and IPN can be sent.