Hey Mabu,
I had the same problem as you. I think Paypal has done a great job with their Payments Pro service, etc, but their documentation (clear technical docs that is) is severely lacking. I hunted high and low but actually ended up just phoning them and talked to a guy there which was a huge help. Paypal tends to throw up about 50,000 pages of documentation to sift through, yet it somehow may not address the most important questions (which was the case for me)...
I'll try my best to help you, I know how frustrating it can be. I'm sure the documentation and resources will get better over time. They really could use a detailed, step by step technical guide about how to integrate actual code in the SDK in a 'For-Dummies' style.
1. What core documentation do I need to absorb (URLs to specific stuff). I've got the Web site payments pro integration guide, but I stopped once I realized I needed SOAP and got lost in that.
-https://www.paypal.com/en_US/pdf/PP_WebsitePaymentsPro_IntegrationGuide.pdf
-https://www.paypal.com/en_US/pdf/PP_WebsitePaymentsPro_APIReference.pdf
-there are more but they honestly aren't very helpful, for example, nowhere in these two above guides actually tells you what to do on a code level. Nothing about how to 'integrate' anything, just a high level overview.... I was pretty disappointed by this.
2. How do I gain access to the sandbox area where I can run tests?
-https://www.paypal.com/en_US/pdf/PP_Sandbox_UserGuide.pdf
3. Do I need the Pear SOAP libraries or do the PHP samples (which I can't find documentation for) supercede the need for the soap library?
-get the PHP SDK from
https://www.paypal.com/sdk and install it via PEAR (there is info on how to do that in the SDK). This is one of the weakest links in the documentation, in my experience. Fear not, there are more links below.
4. Has this system been tested under PHP 4.3.10? Is there any advantage to using PHP 5.x?
-stick with 4.x.
5. If I need Soap, will the current Pear version 0.9.1 work?
-you don't need to actually write any SOAP if you are using the PHP SDK, as the PHP calls are wrappers to the SOAP and all the data becomes available via PHP objects. As for the version, I thinnk it should be fine, but not sure. Just update it from within PEAR if you can.
6. How can I check to make sure my PHP setup has the libraries and resources needed?
-once you get pear running you can use the command 'pear list' to tell you what is installed. Check the readme/install file that comes with the PHP SDK for more info with that. You'll need OpenSSL I know, for example.
7. Are there some remedial samples that show how this all works?
-I found a great post by Paypal_Cory here for direct payment:
http://www.paypaldev.org/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10394
ALSO THESE:
http://paypaltech.com/Dave/api_sourcebook/html/php.html
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/payhks/
http://www.helloknitty.com (a site that has everything done with Website Payments Pro)
http://paypaltech.com/Dave/api_sourcebook/html/example_SOAP/dcc_ex/dcc_ex_other.html
https://paypaltech.com/Stephen/pwpp/code/
https://paypaltech.com/Stephen/pwpp/
8. Is there a clear sequence of "here's what you need to do: a, b, c" to get this thing set up?
-the above links should cover that.
I hope this helps, best of luck to you!
-Jason
