The EWS sandbox is a test environment that allows you to experiment with the Yahoo! search marketplace by creating and running Enterprise
Web Services (EWS) client applications.
The EWS sandbox provides a modified version of the production system, and focuses on the Marketing API. While all services and operations are designed to function the same way as on production, the actual result sets observed on sandbox may vary.
To obtain a license key for the sandbox, contact your account manager. You will be issued a test master account, MasterAccountID, a test account, AccountID, and a new username and password for accessing these test accounts.
We reserve the right to delete, reset, or otherwise alter your test accounts, username, or password at any time. We will try to provide advance notice in such cases.
Quota for the sandbox is set at 500 operations per day per license. All quota is assigned to the Marketing command group, which is the only command group available in the sandbox.
We strive to keep the sandbox up and running at all times. However, because the sandbox is a test environment, short, periodic outages may occur. The sandbox is not available during the daily maintenance window scheduled form 9:00 to 11:00 pm. PST/PDT.
The URL prefix for the sandbox is: https://sandbox.marketing.ews.yahooapis.com. Use the URL prefix to form complete, local URLs. See EWS Locations.
The sandbox is a test environment and is not intended for use with production data or confidential financial information. Please do not use an actual credit card number or other confidential information when testing the Marketing API services on the sandbox as Yahoo! Search Marketing will not be held liable for information you enter in the sandbox.
If you need assistance in obtaining a test credit card number that can be used in the sandbox, please contact your Yahoo! Search Marketing Account team, or send an email to ews-help@yahoo-inc.com.
The sandbox supports all of the Marketing API services, except the UpgradeService.
Differences between the sandbox and the production system are noted in this table and in the sections below.
| Service | Sandbox Status |
|---|---|
| AccountService | Available. |
| AdGroupService | Available. |
| AdService | Available. Editorial review is simulated. |
| BasicReportService | Available. Results are simulated and will not correspond to the campaign data in your test account. Report elements may not correspond to actual report elements (see Report Details). |
| BidInformationService | Available. Results are simulated and may not be current. |
| BudgetingService | Available. |
| BulkService | Available. Results are simulated and may not be current. |
| CampaignService | Available. |
| CompanyService | Available. | ExcludedWordsService | Available. |
| ForecastService | Available. Results are based on a static snapshot of the data and will not change on a daily basis. |
| GeographicalTargetingService | Available |
| KeywordResearchService | Available. Results are based on a static snapshot of the data and will not change on a daily basis. |
| KeywordService | Available. Editorial review is simulated. |
| LocationService | Available. Returns the URL prefix for the sandbox. |
| MasterAccountService | Available. Customer accounts created in the sandbox with the addNewCustomer operation are not accessible via the sandbox Marketing API. Also, users will not receive an email to set their initial password as they do in the production environment. |
| UpgradeService | Not available. |
| UserManagementService | Available. Users created with the addUser operation will not receive an email to set their initial password as they do in the production environment. However, the new user can be granted roles with the addAuthorizationForUser and addAuthorizationsForUser operations. | VaultService | Available. |
All campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords are created under your test accounts. These test accounts are completely separate from your production accounts. There is no possibility that the ads you create in the sandbox will be accidentally served, nor will your production accounts be charged for any bids that are placed on sandbox.
Many of the results you will see in the sandbox are simulated or based on static snapshots of the data. Because the ads you create on the sandbox are not served and the bids you make are not processed, budgets, quality indices, performance metrics, forecasted data, report data, and so on are not updated. Moreover, we make no attempt to protect the data in the sandbox. If you add, update, or delete information under your test accounts, we cannot guarantee that these changes will be preserved.
Note: Do not use the results from the sandbox to perform any type of campaign management for your production accounts.
For those services that include operations that issue emails, emails will not be sent in the sandbox environment.
In the sandbox, the editorial review process for ads and keywords is simulated based on a set of pre-selected terms. See Sandbox Editorial Reviews.
To help you get started building EWS client applications and to ease the process of migrating your existing applications to EWS, we provide sample client applications in four languages: Java, .NET, Perl, and PHP. See Sample Code.
Use the sandbox to build and run these client sample applications. Then, continue using the sandbox to build and test your own client applications before moving them to our production system.
Documentation that includes simulation data and a description of how Variable Minimum Bids work in the EWS sandbox is available on the Technology Solutions Portal. See Downloads.