PayPal Hacks

Don't waste your money unless you are one of the minority of webmasters that work exclusively in a Windows environment.This book could have been useful if the authors had not insisted on showing all examples in asp, VBscript and .net which are used by only about 20% of all web servers and shown them in perl or php which are available for virtually every web server platform.

good book in good conditions and easy to read and very clean was a good deal for the price thank you

Paypal has been one of the few successful ideas on the Web. Ranking with Amazon, eBay and Yahoo. So much so that eBay bought Paypal in its entirety a few years ago.Since then, as the authors show in several hacks, Paypal is now deeply embedded into eBay as a very convenient payment scheme. A few hacks show how to use Paypal from the standpoint of a single user.But a broader lesson of this book is that the integration of Paypal into eBay is by no means exclusive. If you maintain your own website and want to sell items on it, that have absolutely nothing to do with auctions, then many hacks discuss how to use Paypal to facilitate this. Including integrating third party shopping carts with it. Indeed, there is an entire chapter devoted to these tasks.Also, the authors describe how even if you are competing in the online auction space with eBay, you can still use Paypal. It appears that eBay is going to careful lengths to have Paypal treat its merchants equally. Certainly, the authors point out that Paypal is used with eBay's main competitors' auctions, like uBid, Yahoo and Amazon. Reassuring if you have a small operation and are contemplating Paypal.

I really like the content in this book, especially the basics that it covers. I've never really understood some of the intricacies of PayPal, and I do need to know about it, so that's good. Unlike most O'Reilly books which have the opportunity to be somewhat language-neutral, however, this one fails at that important aspect. Many similar books from O'Reilly attempt to give examples in several languages, for instance, Perl, PHP, Python, Visual Basic, Java, etc. But this book only offers its wealth of examples in ASP.NET. Which is such a shame. Shame on you O'Reilly! It could have been so useful!!!

PayPal, like Amazon and eBay, has become a utility for technological civilization. You can buy, sell, or contribute to a worthy cause. Safer and easier than using a credit card, PayPal is changing the way we transact.That's why "PayPal Hacks" is great. Not only is PayPal the most known and convenient way to deal with money on-line but there are some significant business processes that need to be thought through for brick and mortar retail. Not every hack will apply but many will inspire new ideas and bring some increased awareness. Using "PayPal Hacks" will let you take things at your pace and the bite-sized nuggets let you get started immediately.You will need some decent computer skills to get past the first few hacks, and unless you do business on IIS you'll need to rework the code examples. The good news is that once you get going you'll probably be glad you took the journey.

I create websites as a volunteer for a few small groups. Enhancing a website by adding a PayPal button, can save time in collecting dues and event payments. You can add a simple button using PayPal's online tools, but if you want to do more this book can tell you how to do it. Code samples are supplied in HTML, VBScript, ActionScript, C#, JavaScript and more. It covers security using OpenSSL.Like the other O'Reilly Hacks books, pushpins and screws mark tips and warnings, respectively. These marks enhance the clarity of the writing, which is already lucid and concise.Thermometer icons indicate the difficulty of a Hack. Easy Hacks include (a) Quick-Link to Transaction Details (b) Custom Designed Buttons (c) Sending money to someone with an account without setting up one for the sender. Moderate Hacks include (a) Tracking website visitors (b) Receive Instant Payment Notification (IPN) (c) Insert Payment Details into A Database.Advanced Hacks cover (a) Refunding a Payment without Logging Into the PayPal site (b) Issue Payments En Masse Using the PayPal API (c) Pay Affiliates and Suppliers on a Schedule.These and 91 other little tricks can make PayPal a really productive environment for collecting and processing payments. The book helps you navigate PayPal's website, telling you where to find scripts and code.Some of the Hacks are for PayPal users. It shows how to create an account and verify it. I have met many online shoppers who have found the PayPal user experience frustrating and this book can help them. The book goes beyond a mere programmer's guide, it offers solid business advice. For example, it explains how the PayPal Mastercard debit card can be used.Advanced programmers won't need the easy tricks. They can find .NET Hacks that add PayPal functionality to Windows DLLs, not just websites. There is even a Hack for Dreamweaver, Adobe's web development tool.I like the book because even a novice PayPal Hacker can find value in this thorough and comprehensive reference book.

Like all the "Hacks" books from O'Reilly, this one is quite solid. There's plenty of info about the things you know about but don't quite understand, as well as things you didn't know anything about.Of course, it runs into the problem that any book of this nature runs into - which coding language to use for the examples. Personally, I'd like to see a bit less code and a bit more high level discussion about the concept of what the code should be doing (and thus be able to easily translate into any programming language).But overall, this is a solid buy.

I make websites. PayPal integration is the bane of my life. I bought this book 3 years ago, and it hasn't helped me once with my integration issues.The only thing wrong with this book is the title. It implies that the book will advise on understanding how PayPal's processes operate - and how to make those processes work for the developer.It does the first part of the job very well. It explains how Paypal works, mainly from the user's perspective (with insight into how & why it works that way). It does very little to help the developer, though, and whatever code examples are provided in Microsoft script, not PHP - even so, none of them answered my (very pressing; very common) questions.As a rule I find O'Reilly guides a bit too technical & jargon-heavy for me. This one's the opposite! Kudos to them, for taking the wider market into account ... they went a bit overboard with this, though. It is NOT 'industrial strength' and it barely counts as 'hacks'.Good for: First-time PayPal users (it explains everything); developers doing their first PayPal integration; SOHOs looking to understand what they can do with payment buttons.Bad for: Anything you can't get from the PayPal developer area! There is nothing new here.

I read a previous review that said this book taught him nothing but, since I was looking for a handy guide to form examples, I took a chance on the slightly cheaper Kindle version and, within 10 minutes I knew I'd wasted my hard earned cash.Many of the 'HACKS' are simply telling us basic stuff that can be found on the PayPal website.Many of the form examples are also straight from the PayPal website and even the advanced stuff can be found on helpful blogs and tutorial websites.As for using ASP code? Who the heck uses ASP other than Microsoft obsessives?Almost everyone and just about all decent CMS platforms use PHP. PHP is the most commonly used coding system for websites (beyond HTML of course) but the examples in this book were obviously written by someone who only knows ASP. Thanks alot but that is not helpful for anyone using HTML/PHP, anyone using WordPress, Joomla, etc., or anyone using iWeb or RapidWeaver on a Mac or WYSIWYG (Web Builder) etc., on a PC - among many more development platforms and tools that are used these days.Waste of money. Now how the heck do I get a refund?