PayPal Sandbox API SSL handshake error suddenly started using PayPal PHP SDK?

Question

Up until today, I have been successfully developing with PayPal's sandbox using the new PayPal PHP SDK which comes preconfigured to use this sandbox URL:

https://api.sandbox.paypal.com/2.0/
(URL in Chrome currently returns: "Error 107 (net::ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR): SSL protocol error.")

But today my webapp is crashing due to a SSL handshake failure: Uncaught exception 'PPConnectionException' with message 'error:14094410:SSL routines:SSL3_READ_BYTES:sslv3 alert handshake failure' in ./paypal-sdk-1.0.92/lib/PPHttpConnection.php:185

The only event that has occurred since yesterday (when my webapp was last working) was I reset my sandbox "seller" account, which may have reset the API credentials according to this post. Since I've updated the API credentials manually, and have verified them to be correct, I cannot say if they were ever wrong at this point.

After lots of searching, I found other web articles that say the URL should be:

https://api-3t.sandbox.paypal.com/2.0/
(URL in Chrome returns a SOAP response.)

So I changed my PayPal PHP SDK's included URL from https://api.sandbox.paypal.com/2.0/ to https://api-3t.sandbox.paypal.com/2.0/ and it is working perfectly again. What happened here? Is the non-"3t" sandbox URL simply broken right now?

EDIT: After the feedback received from @Win and @JoelP, I have filed a bug report through the PayPal SDK github so someone at PayPal can explain what changed today and fix the SDK to have the correct URL when using Signature credentials.

EDIT 2: PayPal fixed the issue a few days ago. It's going to be available in the next release. https://github.com/paypal/SDKs/issues/22#issuecomment-8660682

Thanks for the help everyone.

Answer 1

Differences are between Certificate and Signature

Signature is the preferred way of accessing PayPal API.

Answer 2

The issue is fixed and the code has been pushed to master branch. You should see the refreshed bundles of the sdk out on x.com in the next couple of days.

Refer GitHub issue here https://github.com/paypalx/SDKs/issues/22

Thanks, Prasanna.

Answer 3

I can't answer the question but I can say that I have just discovered the same problem. I confirm that jimp's workaround of changing the SDK's service endpoint config to :

service.EndPoint="https://api-3t.sandbox.paypal.com/2.0/"

solved my issue. (This is in the Paypal SDK config/sdk_config.ini file).

In my case I am using the PHP SDK. I have not changed anything on my sandbox account. My best guess is that the original URL is simply down for a while. (Firefox shows the "Secure Connection Failed" alert).