# Testing sandbox

Try out your app on streetartdev.com, without adding anything to the live website.

While you're building your app, test it on [streetartdev.com](https://streetartdev.com). It works just like Street Art Cities, but has its own separate data. Anything you add or change there doesn't show up on the live website.

## Please don't test on the live website

Everything you do on [streetartcities.com](https://streetartcities.com) is seen by real people. Test artworks, edits and collections show up in the activity feed and the review queue, where our community has to spend time cleaning them up.

We treat anything that looks like spam as spam. That can lead to a warning, and eventually to your account being blocked. So only point your app at the live website once it's ready to be used for real.

## Getting started with the sandbox

The sandbox has its own accounts and apps, so you'll need to set things up there once:

1. Create an account on [streetartdev.com](https://streetartdev.com).
2. Go to **[Settings → Developers](https://streetartdev.com/me/settings#developers)** and [create an app](/getting-started/create-an-app/), just like on the live website.
3. Use `streetartdev.com` instead of `streetartcities.com` in every link in these docs. For example:

| Live website                                      | Sandbox                                        |
| ------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- |
| `https://streetartcities.com/api/oauth/authorize` | `https://streetartdev.com/api/oauth/authorize` |
| `https://streetartcities.com/api/oauth/token`     | `https://streetartdev.com/api/oauth/token`     |
| `https://streetartcities.com/api/edits`           | `https://streetartdev.com/api/edits`           |
| `https://streetartcities.com/api/collections`     | `https://streetartdev.com/api/collections`     |

<Admonition kind="tip" title="Make the domain a setting">
  Keep the domain in one place in your app, like an environment variable. Then
  switching from the sandbox to the live website is a one-line change. Our [demo
  app](https://github.com/streetartcities/api-demo) does this with
  `SAC_BASE_URL`.
</Admonition>

## Going live

When your app is ready, create an app on [streetartcities.com](https://streetartcities.com/me/settings#developers) as well. It gets a new client ID and client secret: the ones from the sandbox don't work on the live website, and the other way around.