Pro PayPal E-Commerce certainly surprised us, here at PC Book review. We thought that adding PayPal to a website was pretty straightforward with a few options for integration for those who wanted a more sophisticated experience for their customers. And then Pro PayPal E-Commerce by Damon Williams arrived.

It's worth noting upfront that the author works for PayPal in their developer program so in some ways, this book could be seen as a propaganda exercise. On the other hand, if anyone knows the nuts and bolts of integrating PayPal features in a website, this is the guy.

Product	Pro PayPal E-Commerce
From	www.apress.com
	Superb coverage, clear explanations and business insights
	Nothing

The rest of the book is made up of basic website payments, encrypted payments, the PayPal API, Payflow Gateway, reporting, managing disputes and a reference section.

What became immediately apparent on reading through Pro PayPal E-Commerce was how clearly the author writes and how thorough the coverage of the options was. The book is packed with tables and lists covering every conceivable area of PayPal's system from user permission levels to credit card processing parameters.

There are plenty of code examples, some quite lengthy with PHP and Java being used primarily. The API section was naturally quite code heavy although UK readers may end up skipping the details on Website Payments Pro as that has been implemented differently there. UK readers will instead want the next chapter on Payflow Pro which does match the system available there.

The section on dispute handling was good with some useful notes on handling these from both the business perspective as well as technically. The information on reporting options was also interesting and covered the different types of information that can be accessed as well as how to manipulate it Excel.

The book finishes with a very complete reference section that covers variable references, error codes and so on.

We thought this was a great read. It's not often you finish a book and feel confident you have all the information you're going to need to complete your project. The book isn't just technical but also has lots of useful nuggets on business practices and background on payment systems in general for those that are unfamiliar with them at this level.

We feel confident in recommending this book to anyone who is involved with developing E-commerce systems or is going to be in the future. The author Damon Williams has a very readable style that is mercifully humour free but never dull and explains everything clearly and concisely and despite its relatively low page count at 260 pages or so, still manages to cover a lot of ground without ever feeling as if it's being too terse. It's rated as being for intermediate to advanced users which we'd agree with but it's never hard going.