Using Google Checkout on a Development Site

The instructions for completing a basic HTML integration with Google Checkout are tailored to merchants that do not have separate development and production sites. This page explains how you can integrate Google Checkout with a development site before launching to a production site. These instructions are designed for merchants that make changes to their site in a development environment, ensure that the changes work correctly and then release those changes to a customer-facing, or production, website.

Set Up Your Test Environment

The following three steps explain how to set up Google Checkout test accounts:

Create Test Accounts
Locate the Merchant ID and Merchant Key for Your Test Account
Confirm that Your Test Account Can Submit Orders using Basic HTML

Create Test Accounts

Go to http://sandbox.google.com/checkout/sell/ to set up test accounts in the Google Checkout Sandbox service. The Sandbox is a development environment that is designed to help you test your Google Checkout implementation. The Sandbox offers the same functionality as the production Google Checkout system with the following exceptions:

• The Sandbox requires you to use test credit card numbers.
• The Sandbox does not actually execute debits and credits.
• The Sandbox user interface displays an overlay that indicates you are working in the Sandbox environment.

You need to create two test accounts in the Sandbox. One of these accounts will function as a buyer account and the other will function as your merchant account. Please note that Google Checkout will not let you use your merchant account to complete an order at your own store. (In other words, the same account can not function as both the customer and the merchant for the same transaction.) In addition, you need to provide different information to create these two accounts.

• Create your buyer account at http://sandbox.google.com/checkout.
• Create your merchant account at http://sandbox.google.com/checkout/sell/.

The following guidelines explain how to set up your test accounts:

• Skip any sections that ask for your bank account information. Since the Sandbox system does not process billing or payments, this information is not necessary when you are testing your implementation.

• Enter any name and address as long as the State field contains a valid two-letter abbreviation for a U.S. state and the Zip Code field contains a five-digit or nine-digit zip code. (You do not need to enter the correct zip code for the address.)

• Enter any 10-digit phone number for the Phone Number field.

• Enter any value in either the Federal tax ID or Social Security number fields.

• Use one of the credit card numbers in the following table:

  Card Type	Card Number	CVC	Expiration Date
  American Express	3782 8224 6310 005	any four digits	any future date
  Discover	6011 1111 1111 1117	any three digits	any future date
  MasterCard	5555 5555 5555 4444	any three digits	any future date
  VISA	4111 1111 1111 1111	any three digits	any future date

  
  

  Note: Merchants in the United Kingdom should not use an American Express card.

Locate the Merchant ID and Merchant Key for Your Test Account

Sign in to your test merchant account at https://sandbox.google.com/checkout/sell to locate your Merchant ID and your Merchant Key. You will need both of these values to test your Google Checkout integration. You will use both values to encode order information before submitting that information to Google Checkout.

After signing in to your account, click on the Settings tab. Then click on the Integration link on the left side of the page. Your 10- or 15-digit Merchant ID and your Merchant Key will both be listed under the Account information header.

Note: You should never share your Merchant Key with anyone, and no Google representative will ever ask you for your Merchant Key.

Confirm that Your Test Account Can Submit Orders using Basic HTML

Under the Shopping cart post security header, uncheck the box to allow your account to use API requests with name-value pairs. After removing the check from the checkbox, click the Save button to save your settings.

Note: You must use the XML API if you want to post digitally signed shopping carts.

Submitting Requests in Your Test Environment

Throughout this documentation, examples and instructions show that your HTML forms should submit requests to the following URL. (In the URL, you would replace the text MERCHANT_ID with the merchant ID for your production Google Checkout account.)

<form method="POST"
  action="https://checkout.google.com/api/checkout/v2/checkoutForm/MERCHANT_ID">

To submit a request to the Google Checkout Sandbox, you must make two changes to this URL. You must make the same changes to any Google Checkout Buttons that submit test orders to Google Checkout.

1. Instead of submitting the request to checkout.google.com, you must submit the request to sandbox.google.com/checkout.

   <form method="POST"
     action="https://sandbox.google.com/checkout/api/checkout/v2/checkoutForm/MERCHANT_ID">
   

2. Instead of using the merchant ID for your production account, you must use the merchant ID for your test merchant account.

Launching to Production

After you have finished testing your Google Checkout integration, you need to make the following changes to launch your changes to your production website:

1. Update all URLs in HTML forms from sandbox.google.com/checkout to checkout.google.com.

2. Update all URLs in HTML forms to use the merchant ID associated with your production merchant account instead of the merchant ID associated with your test merchant account.

3. Update the URLs for all Google Checkout buttons from sandbox.google.com to checkout.google.com.

4. Update all Google Checkout button URLs to use the merchant ID associated with your production merchant account instead of the merchant ID associated with your test merchant account.