ASP.NET Development server and PayPal instant payment notification

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I am currently developing part of a website where I pass cart information to PayPal to accept payment. PayPal will call back a "secret URL" on my website to allow me to confirm the cart details haven't been tampered with.

I hate installing software I don't need. This is especially the case with software like IIS which just feels so intrusive, which is why I use the ASP.NET Development Server when creating websites. The problem with this server is that it only accepts connections from the local machine. My computer is behind a hardware firewall and my web server wont accept remote connections, so how can I test my PayPal IPN call back?

Simple. Obviously I have to open a port on my firewall and direct it to my machine. So I opened port 80. Then I used this tool to list on port 80 and redirect all traffic to port 10101 (the port my ASP.NET development server was listening on). The result is that a remote computer can now make a HTTP request to my computer, and I can receive it + debug it in Visual Studio without having to install IIS.

The great thing about this port forwarder is that it is only 44KB in size and doesn't require any installation!

Comments

Anonymous said…
guest00:

Pete, thanks a lot for this simple solution!
20 February 2009 at 11:16
editor said…
I have had to do this in the past, my firewall had a portforwarding option built in, saved loads of time, only problem I hit was the whole https:// part of the paypal integration as the visual studio webserver won't run https, I tried portforwarding 443 to the correct port but as it had no encryption paypal didn't like it.

Have you thought about running a virtual PC/server on your dev machine?
11 March 2009 at 10:11
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