> You can do all this from javascript running on the client?

yes, you can even - to some extent - save values between browser
sessions (using cookies).

> I didn't know it can track state as the user moves between pages.

cookies, but I am not sure they are realy needed for that. but it is
what I use.

> I don't know javascript but would be willing to learn.  
> I assume it's just another programming language, right?

It is a lot like C/C++/Java/C#. Plenty of documentation on the web and
in books.

> Why do you do the monetary conversion yourself?  This is one 
> thing PayPal seems to be good at.  

IIRC way back when I wrote this PP could not do it, so I did it myself.
Never felt an urge to change somthing that worked.

> Would you be interested in consulting to set up a small sample site
for me,
> with documentation so that I can make incremental changes from there?

No, too much work (for the time I have to spare, which value tends to be
negative anyway, and even more so now). But I can give you the
uncompressed sources of what I use (on the web the javascript is
compressed to long lines, to save some web space and gain some speed,
and to discourage hackers).
The whole thing is a bit complicated because the shopping cart page
(which is the page that does the transfer to PP) is generated by
javascript, so there is no plain HTML to see. The cart can be filled
either from that page or from the individual product pages.

Note: I don't write the pages by hand, they are written by a Python
script. Yet another programming language :)

> All I do is what it said in the PayPal shopping cart manual.  
> I didn't even know it was possible to add my own layer like that.  

When I wrote this PP had different documentation, I think what I use is
now documented in
https://www.paypal.com/en_US/NL/pdf/PP_WebsitePaymentsStandard_Integrati
onGuide.pdf chapter 8.

> Do you  use a regular
> web hosting service or do you run your own web server or run 
> critical parts of the site on your own server?

I use a 'standard' hosting service, without any server-side scripting
(simple passive HTML, but with embedded javascript). I use a third-party
service to convert non-paypal orders to an email (which my
administration program converts to a proforma invoice). My hosting
service can now provide CGI scripts for that, but not at the moment I
wrote the whole thing, and this makes it easy to switch web services if
I ever want to. The shopping cart effectively runs on the clients PC,
the payment actions on PP, email-to-profoma conversion on my PC (when I
run the administration program). No need for a 'critical' server
anywhere. (I think PP is only 20% of my business, but that is almost
100% of the outside-europe business.)

One catch: for some reason my shopping cart does not work on apple
safari (but it works on other browser on apple). And of course it won't
work if the user has disabled javascript and/or cookies.

Wouter van Ooijen

-- -------------------------------------------
Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: www.voti.nl
consultancy, development, PICmicro products
docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: www.voti.nl/hvu
 

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