IPN was not sent, and the handshake was not verified. Please review your information.

Username555
Contributor
Contributor

I get this error every single time I want to try and test the IPN simulation.

 

The listener code I have is very simple:

 

<?php


file_put_contents('export.txt', var_export($_POST,true));

 

?>

 

I have this uploaded on my servers, which have valid and certified SSL.

 

I type in the URL to the listener, and choose express checkout.

 

I click 'Send IPN'  I get the non-informative error 'IPN was not sent, and the handshake was not verified. Please review your information.'

 

We thought it was the SSL so we bought and reinstalled (twice now) certificates. SSL is not the problem. Everything comes back green when we run SSL certificate checks on the URL.

 

 

On top of all of this, the example code on https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/ipn/gs_IPN/

 

contains .PHP code that once we put into a file, and ran the simulator, it got stuck in a endless loop that is currently filling our server's error log with a constantly growing error log. 

 

Anyways, the endless loop is not the main problem here. The IPN simulator refuses to work under any condition, we've tried everything the internet had to offer, from answers to Stack Overflow or simply calling PayPal support to be told we need to email someone because they had no clue what we were talking about and then the phone call disconnected.

 

I have also tried the sample code found here: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/ipn/ht_ipn/

 

Why are there two separate PHP sample code guides? Anyways, it did not work either. 

 

We are trying to set up a process to be a business through PayPal, but this is making it impossible.

 

Is there any help for this other than the error message that doesn't tell me what's wrong at all? Is there an error log somewhere I'm missing?

 

 

 

 

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24 REPLIES 24

monlou
Contributor
Contributor

je vois qu'il ya plusieurs qui ont ce même problème mais pas beaucoup de solutions

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jman777x
New Community Member

I am having the same exact problem and am just as aggravated as the guy in the original post.  I have a listener first thing it does is log info so I can see if it's even getting to my site.  It's not.  The process seems simple to send a message from your IPN Simulator.  Even if I just enter my listener url, select trxn type, and leave test data I get that stupid error.  On top of that, your site is like trying to navigate a class VI river in a rubber tube.  I have over 20 years dev exp, this is the first encounter with PayPal integration of any kind.  You need to get some devs with no paypal experience to work through your site and tell you everything that's wrong with the layout, content organiztion and lack thereof.  Make sure you have a lot of disk space free.

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zoniko
Contributor
Contributor

Yeah, same problem here. I wish PayPal wasn't that careless with its own products.

 

Any one from PayPal?? you just have to that tell us: "Look, this IPN simulator just don't work try this other thing.."

 

Anyway, if someone got any feedback from them please share.

 

Thanks!

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QFDev
Contributor
Contributor

February 27th and still not working. I can put HTTP and HTTPs endpoints and the call is simply not made. Can anyone from PayPal confirm if this tool will ever be fixed?

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rolznz
Contributor
Contributor

Same here - it doesn't even hit my endpoint. This is ridiculous.

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swader
Contributor
Contributor

Yup, doesn't even try to send a signal.

The fact that there's no feedback from PP about this is not surprising. Ever since they bought Braintree, they laid off their entire developer advocacy team and there are now ZERO people doing developer outreach. It's as if they want people to stop using their API.

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rolznz
Contributor
Contributor

Is there any alternative?

 

I guess creating a real button for an item worth $0.01?

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swader
Contributor
Contributor

That's the only one I can think of, yeah, and it's not a pleasant one. Another could maybe be faking the request and sending it from an app like Postman, if you had a request example back from then the simulator still worked.

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rolznz
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks swader.

 

I guess i'll go with the real button because what I'm really trying to test is the 4-stage IPN process, not just a fake request to my endpoint.

 

I think a community-made IPN simulator may be in order 🙂

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rolznz
Contributor
Contributor

So I went ahead and created a new button with a price of $0.01.

 

The most painful part was realising I needed to create a new account so that I could purchase my product (You can't do this with your own business account). Luckily, I had a second credit card...

 

You need two browsers open (or a private browsing tab) so you don't have to keep switching between accounts.

 

I'm using a paypal IPN library which made the process much easier (https://github.com/andzdroid/paypal-ipn since I have a NodeJS webservice). Lucky for me it worked first time around! For those who are writing their IPN listener from scratch, good luck Smiley Frustrated

 

This took me about 20 minutes to do the button, setup my new paypal account and test the call, compared to hours wasted yesterday attempting to use the broken Payapl IPN simulator...

 

Hope this helps someone!

 

- rolznz

 

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