I have a client who will have a website I am designing that sells personalized gifts. They need to have a cart that will take options that are typed in by the buyer, like they need to fill in the name of the gift recipient, occasion, kids names etc.... The client would also prefer not to get a merchants account-that's why they like PayPal. PayPal has said that their program won't do it. Somehow I have to get a cart that will carry the filled in form fields through the check out process. The form would need to be on the page that has the product, not in the checkout. Anyone have any ideas? This is my first cart and it's turning into a headache!

Thre options:

1) If you have a limited number of needs, you can use the pre-set fields offered by the PayPal itnerfac: item_name, item_number, custom and on0/os0/on1/os1.

2) If you need to send through more fields than that, you may need to write JavaScript or server script to append the fields together and send them all through the "custom" field (e.g., custom="Joe|40th Birthday|Joey, Jennifer and John").

3) Or, you may need to store the data on your side (in a text file, database or send yourself an email) pass-through and identifier in "item_number" and match that back to the data you have stored.

Unfortunately there currently aren't easier solutions.

Patrick Breitenbach
PayPal, Inc.
Dev Net: https://www.paypal.com/pdn

"custom" is 256. The rest are 128.

Patrick Breitenbach
PayPal, Inc.
Dev Net: https://www.paypal.com/pdn