The Sandbox Hotel
What your free test hotel contains, how its keys work, and what it can't do.
Every developer account gets one Sandbox Hotel. It is a working ChatBeds property filled with invented data, made through the same code as a real hotel, so prices, bills and housekeeping behave exactly as they do in production.
What it contains
| In the Sandbox Hotel | |
|---|---|
| Location | 100 Test Street, Newark, DE, United States. Time zone America/New_York |
| Currency | USD, with no tax and no cleaning fee |
| Check-in and check-out | 14:00 and 12:00 |
| Rooms | 12 rooms in 3 room types: Standard (6 rooms, sleeps 2, 90.00 a night), Deluxe (4 rooms, sleeps 3, 140.00), Suite (2 rooms, sleeps 4, 240.00) |
| Guests and bookings | 8 made-up stays around today's date. 2 guests are already checked in and have paid half |
| Staff | 6 made-up staff, for example Anna Weber (general manager) and Maria Lopez (housekeeper) |
| Also | Stock items, a few maintenance tickets and two expenses, so the dashboard looks lived in |
The guests and staff have no phone numbers, so nothing you do in the sandbox sends a WhatsApp message to anyone.
Never billed
The Sandbox Hotel is free and never billed. It doesn't count towards the Free plan's room limit, and making keys for it needs no plan. You can connect your own apps to it at any time, before ChatBeds reviews them.
Keys
When you press Start building, ChatBeds makes one key called Sandbox key. Bookings made with it carry the source PARTNER:sandbox.
To make more keys, revoke one, or give a key a webhook address, open Settings → Partner API in the dashboard with the Sandbox Hotel selected.
- A property can have up to 5 keys in use at once.
- A key is shown once. If you lose it, revoke it and make another.
- Revoking a key stops it at once.
One sandbox per account
Each developer account has one Sandbox Hotel. There is no reset button: bookings you make stay until you cancel them through the API or the dashboard.
What the sandbox can't do
Card payments
The Sandbox Hotel has no Stripe account connected, so payment_links is false in GET /capabilities and creating a payment link answers 400:
{
"detail": "Card payments are not set up for this hotel. An owner connects Stripe on the Finance page."
}You can still test bills: read a folio, add charges, and record payments taken elsewhere with the method CASH, CARD or BANK_TRANSFER. See Folios and payments.
Other properties
Every key and token acts for one property. Calls about anything outside the Sandbox Hotel answer 404, just as they would for a real hotel.
Moving to a real hotel
Your code doesn't change between the sandbox and a real hotel. Only the credential does:
- with a private key, the hotel makes the key on its own Settings → Partner API page;
- with an app, the hotel connects it and you get tokens for its property. See OAuth 2.0.
Building something?