The MaxMind Sandbox has basic capabilities for testing, and there are a few crucial limitations and differences in how it behaves that you should be aware of. Learn more about the limitations and special behavior of the:
Special behavior of the Sandbox APIs
The Sandbox versions of our GeoIP and minFraud web services work similarly to their live versions with several important differences:
- The Sandbox version of the APIs use distinct license keys generated by the Sandbox account. You cannot use a license key generated by your regular MaxMind account to authenticate web service requests of the Sandbox and vice versa. Learn more about managing your license keys. The process is the same on the Sandbox.
- The Sandbox APIs will never run out of service credit. You can simulate the behavior of the web services using the Out Of Credit mode. Learn more about the Out Of Credit mode for the Sandbox environment.
- The Sandbox versions of the APIs have a distinct query history from your regular MaxMind account.
- The Sandbox versions of the APIs have query volume limitations, meant to stop abuse. The Sandbox APIs should not be used to simulate the capacity of the production APIs or their behavior in the event of a high volume of queries. If you want more information about how our APIs perform in high-volume contexts, or if you're trying to test something else and are running into the query limit on the Sandbox versions of the APIs, please reach out to our support team for assistance.
Special behavior of the Sandbox GeoIP web services
The Sandbox version of the GeoIP web services behave differently from the production version of the GeoIP web services in several key ways:
- The Sandbox version of the GeoIP web services use special testing data. Most IP addresses do not exist in the Sandbox GeoIP web service, and you should only submit approved testing IPs to the web service. Learn more about test IPs in the Sandbox GeoIP web services.
- The Sandbox version of the GeoIP web services use their own special testing endpoints. See a list of the Sandbox GeoIP web service endpoints on our developer portal.
Learn more about looking up IPs in the GeoIP Sandbox environment.
Special behavior of the Sandbox minFraud services
The Sandbox version of the minFraud services behave differently from the production version of the GeoIP web services in several key ways:
- The Sandbox version of the minFraud services use special testing data. You cannot submit real transaction data to the minFraud service, you must only submit transactions with approved test data. Learn more about test IPs in the Sandbox minFraud services.
- The Sandbox version of the minFraud services use their own special testing endpoints. See a list of the Sandbox minFraud service endpoints on our developer portal.
- The Sandbox minFraud Service does not use the minFraud scoring engine to score transactions. This means that responses from the Sandbox minFraud service should not be used to evaluate the efficacy of minFraud’s scoring. Learn more about risk scoring.
- The Sandbox version of the minFraud service does not keep a record of submitted transactions. As a result, you cannot add notes to a transaction, report a transaction, or search the history of transactions submitted to the minFraud Sandbox. Learn more about reporting transactions, and searching the log of transactions through the account portal.
- You cannot create custom inputs in the minFraud Sandbox. Learn more about custom inputs.
Learn more about testing transactions in the minFraud Sandbox environment.
Special behavior of the Sandbox Account Portal
Many functions of the MaxMind account portal work in a similar way to their equivalents in production. See a list of all the things that you can test through the Sandbox version of the account portal.
Notably, however, you cannot test payments, subscriptions, and settings to auto-recharge your service credit. By default, the Sandbox account will never run out of service credit. You may test the behavior of the services when you don’t have credit by turning on Out Of Credit mode in your Sandbox account. Learn more about Out Of Credit mode.
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