Text coding when transferring data to Paypal 
Author: Martin GrossHello,
I made a test-drive on the integrated Paypal function and everything seems to work properly, with the exception of text coding.
I am running a website and e-shop in the Czech language and I am neither able nor willing to limit my customers to use only basic latin characters as names and addresses very often include accented characters - sometimes one single accent distiguishes one street from another.
Website X5 Pro handles this very well and everything displays correctly on the website as well as in confirmation e-mails, but when the data is transferred to Paypal, the accented characters get substituted by ASCII codes and the whole text becomes completely unreadable (and different from the original which could be a problem in case of any disputes).
Is there something I can do about this in X5 or do I have to talk to Paypal about this issue?
Thank you
Martin
thats is a paypal issue, and you need to talk to them, probably their website does not accept special characters.
if this post is the correct answer, please mark this answer as correct answer.
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Hello Martin,
Try to check in in your paypal settings the encoding format is set to UTF-8.
you can find an example on how to do this here:
http://www.ktools.net/wiki/content/9/295/en/special-or-accented-characters-do-not-show-up-properly-from-an-ipn-submitted-by-paypal.html
Many thanks!
Author
Hello Claudio,
thank you very much for your answer, I followed the instructions, but still not working.
The data is as follows:
Company: Příšerně žluťoučký kůň | Name: Příšerně | Surname: Žluťoučkýkůň | Address: Úpěl ďábelské ódy | City: Žluťice
And Paypal shows this:
P%u0159í%u0161ern%u011B %u017Dlu%u0165ou%u010Dkýk%u016F%u0148
Úp%u011Bl %u010Fábelské ódy
%u017Dlu%u0165ice
Tried to change to UTF-8 and then also to ISO-8859-2 and Windows 1250 with no effect at all.
On the same page in the "Your order summary" section the coding in the order number (Číslo objednávky) is OK.
Also the link "Cancel and return to" does not show my homepage, but the e-mail address i used to identify the Paypal account in X5.
Strange things happen...:-(
Maybe an important note would be that all this happens in the preview of X5 as I can not go live with this functionality at the moment.
Any further help would be very much appreciated.
Martin
Author
I just sent an e-mail to Paypal. As this might be a problem for more customers, I will inform you about their reaction.
Hello Martin,
Usually this issue has been reported by paypal users when the encoding format used is not correct. In any case it would be better to test it online also on a subfolder to check it correctly since the preview is only to see the appareance and cannot emulate perfectly the server functions.
Please keep me updated.
Author
Hi Claudio,
I only have one hosting available where a live website with e-shop is running and as this site belongs to a paying client, I can not afford to screw something up.
My question is, when I make a copy of the current e-shop, enable the Paypal function and upload it for testing purposes to a subfolder of the current website, what happens to the database?
Thanks
Martin
Hello Martin,
In this case look for a free hosting service so you can upload the projects there to test them online.
About the e-shop question, in the database are only stored the orders made in case you activate this option. For testing purposes you can disable the db option to store the orders made.
Many thanks!