Paypal sandbox account in dotnet: "IPN Response invalid"
- by Sam
I am integrating Paypal with my website. I use a sandbox account, one buyer account and one seller account.  I downloaded the code below from Paypal:
string strSandbox = "https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr";
    HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(strSandbox);
    //Set values for the request back
    req.Method = "POST";
    req.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
    byte[] param = Request.BinaryRead(HttpContext.Current.Request.ContentLength);
    string strRequest = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(param);
    strRequest += "&cmd=_notify-validate";
    req.ContentLength = strRequest.Length;
    //for proxy
    //WebProxy proxy = new WebProxy(new Uri("http://url:port#"));
    //req.Proxy = proxy;
    //Send the request to PayPal and get the response
    StreamWriter streamOut = new StreamWriter(req.GetRequestStream(), System.Text.Encoding.ASCII);
    streamOut.Write(strRequest);
    streamOut.Close();
    StreamReader streamIn = new StreamReader(req.GetResponse().GetResponseStream());
    string strResponse = streamIn.ReadToEnd();
    streamIn.Close();
    if (strResponse == "VERIFIED")
    {
        //check the payment_status is Completed
        //check that txn_id has not been previously processed
        //check that receiver_email is your Primary PayPal email
        //check that payment_amount/payment_currency are correct
        //process payment
    }
    else if (strResponse == "INVALID")
    {
        //log for manual investigation
    }
    else
    {
        //log response/ipn data for manual investigation
    }
When I add this snippet in my pageload event of my success page, I show the IPN response as INVALID, but amount is paid successfully.  Why is this?  Paypal's docs are not clear.