Hello:

I'm still new to paypal and have a couple of questions.

I'm creating my very first e-commerce website for a client who wants to sell items online. Her merchandise selection will be changing over time according to whatever her supplies ship to her. Therefore certain items will eventually sell out and be replaced by new ones. The website using ASP programming to retrieve product info from a MS Access database and displays this info to the consumer along with a shopping cart button. I want also to display the number of units remaining in stock and I want to be able to subtract from this number each time a user makes a purchase.

I know that during the button creation process you can indicate the number of units on hand so that Paypal can block out of stock items. However I am using asp variable fields in my button code to dynamically generate each button rather than manually creating a button for every item. When I do create a button manually and opt to enter a stock quantity, I don't see anything in the button code to indicate the number of units on hand.

Since every item may have a different initial stock quantity, I need an alternative way to stop customers from buying a sold out item or of buying more that what is left in stock. I'll adjust my sql statement to not display an item if stock qty = 0, but I need a way to update that stock qty.

Can IPN or PDT be used to accomplish this?

My other question is that I am wondering if it is possible or necessary to encrypt my shopping cart button code which, as I already mentioned, contains ASP variable fields. (example: <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value=<%=objrs("item_type")%>>)

Thanks in advance

Robert