So my App was released to the AppStore some months ago and was free to download. I gained like 2k Users. Now I am implementing an auto renewable Subscription model, so future users can use the demo app for free and subscribe to get the full content.
How ever I want to thank my Users "from day one" by giving them free access to all content without paying the subscription.
Is there a "given way" how to implement this because it seems like a common scenario. If not, does someone with IAP experience has a smart workaround how to handle/implement it?
Thanks guys :D
The answer from Paul didnt work for me. Neither did any other solutions.
But i managed to find a solution.
In case you use CoreData as database within your app, you can use the solution i found out for my app.
The idea:
If someone downloads the app from the appstore, he will receive the latest database version in your app.
If someone updates your app, coredata will perform a migration. And this migration updates from bottom to top trough your database versions.
Through this behavior we have the opportunity to dinstinct the two cases.
Solution: We create two new database versions. One will only be updated by the former users. We will set a flag here. The new Users will never get in touch with that.
The first new one will create a new attribut field in any entity (e.g. User) e.g. isFormerUser as a Bool. You can set it per default on true.
Now we create a second new one (the latest one). Trough a Core Data mapper it will take the $source attributes if it migrates.
So by that case, all FormerUser were set on True and will keep that attribute.
Here will the default be False, so if $source didnt exist, set it on false (new Users).
This solution is nice because it gets set once by that migration/update and you dont have to carry hardcoded stuff in your app. Now just create a load/get Function from CoreData for that attribute and set a variable to use in an if-statement.
Related
I'm working on an app right now that lets the user create new records on a recurring basis, and lets the schedule how many days in advance they want to create those records. This will almost always take place at a time when the app is not running, so I'm exploring my options for getting the app to be woken up to create the objects. As far as I see it there are four options, one of which is probably not really an option, since I'm trying to use only CloudKit and avoid creating a server-side component.
Option 1:
Use Background fetch to periodically refresh the records and check to see if anything is changed. In this instance I would probably have some kind of CloudKit record that represented the recurrence, in addition to the record type that needs to be created. Then I can just check the recurrence object and create a new record if needed
Option 2:
Schedule a local notification when the user schedules the recurrence. I thought this was going to work, but as far as I can tell, the app will not actually be launched even if it's a silent notification, unlike remote notifications.
Option 3:
Write some code locally that will check a data structure whenever the app is launched to check to see if any new records need to be created.
Option 4:
Create a server application that will create the records for me. Like I said, not really something that I want to do, even if it's the "best" option usually.
With option 1 you can not be certain that your app is running.
Option 2 won't work. As you said the app won't be activated. Or the notification must nog be silent and the user has to select to open the app.
Option 3 is much better than 1 and 2 if you don't mind that it could happen that the records won't be created for a long time if the user never opens up your app.
Option 4 is the best option for this. you will have full control over when to add what.
But... Do you already know in front what data to add? Then why are you adding that data? Can't you just calculate it and assume it's there? Maybe even based on a settings record or so?
Is there really no way of forcing an app update from the app store to do a complete reinstall? (say your database needs to be updated but you have no real need (or desire) to migrate existing data).
(I am wondering if the only way of getting a new version of an app on the device without the update function, is to complete remove the current app, give the updated (new) app a new namespace/identifyer and upload that from "scratch", and then hope the user will actually notice that the app is now a new app...).
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
The 2nd option seems like a bad idea, users wont have any idea that your app has a new "version" so wont go looking for it, so you would have to send them notifications telling them about it. I cant imagine you'd get a huge percentage of people changing over
If all you need to do is delete the old database and start again you can do that. This question has an answer for an sqlite database. Basically you just need to keep track of which version of the model the user has, and when they upgrade, you delete the old one and set up a new database from scratch
What is the simplest way how to check if user is online and display list of online users?
The only way I can think of is some periodic polling server to update last action timestamp, and when last timestamp is more than xx ago, user is considered to be offline. But it doesn't seem like too eficient solution.
Authlogic can do this by default, and is a great authentication system that is very powerful. I would suggest migrating your current authentication system over to it (maybe a days worth of work, depending how customized your system is).
If you can't (or simply don't want to) move your application over to Authlogic, you can check out the source code at the link above, as well as an example project here.
You could potentially check the session time, if you use database session store. When the updated_at extends past a certain time, assume the user is no longer active. This could be problematic as well, however.
Being honest, it's a somewhat difficult scenario to tell the active number of users without some form of periodic server polling. Your thought is not a bad one.
We can list the online users using active record session store, please see this github app https://github.com/mohanraj-ramanujam/online-users
It's quite common in sites- you have a "demo" version with a guest account full of data/posts/comments that you can play with, and all the data is reset every few hours so users wont spam the demo site.
I thought to have another rails environment, "mysite_demo" and use a cron job to call rake to reset it's database every X hours, and populate the seed data.
Then it hit me that all over my app I'll have to check if I'm running in "demo-mode":
For example, if the demo site has a login/register page too, a user might register, insert some data and wonder why his account is deleted after he logged in again.. so demosite shouldn't have a register option at all.
So I thought I'll make a "demo" branch of the code.. with the difference and just merge changes as I go... sounds like an overkill.
ideas?
In my application I started with a fixed demo user with an account that resets every hour. Something about that model didn't quite sit right - if there were multiple users hitting the demo at the same time you could get into some weird concurrency issues. And what if a user is in the middle of a demo and your reset the demo account? What happens?
I don't know if this model works for you but I ended up creating a brand new user account with a demo flag set in the database - I also automatically log the user in. This way the user gets to play around for as long as they like and I don't have to worry about data getting deleted/changed while a user demos my app. I run a cron job every night that deletes users with the demo flag set that are older than 24 hours.
If the demo version is running from its own database, how is it any different from the real thing? The demo site is just an instance of your product.
Just clean up the DB and redeploy the demo as needed. Is it just this simple or am I missing something?
Then it hit me that all over my app I'll have to check if I'm running in "demo-mode" (e.g, you cant register a new user in the demo) and make the site behave accordingly.
If the site is in demo, why does it matter what the users do? Anything they do will be wiped in a few hours, so they won't be able to actually do work with it.
It sounds like you are trying to handicap the site so they will pay. I don't know what your site does, but if its a host based service(web page that stores & display information) then the limited life span of the data should deter squatters.
If you website does something that can be used elsewhere, then I can see limiting it. An example might be a service that transforms media formats, or writes resumes. If the user can do something useful in the 2 hour window and walk away with it, then you might consider branching.
Why not allow the user to make an account even if it is deleted in an hour?
That allows them to see how the registration process of the script works for at least an hour, maybe give a message on the signup page that the account is only valid for an hour.
Just my thoughts
Is there any other functionality that is different in the demo version than the production environment? If it is just an issue of making the user register, you could just create a registered demo account in production, and give out the user name/password for people. Although this may not be an option depending on other business requirements.
If you are willing to use Authlogic you can take a look at this, then every X hours you can look through the database for users that start with anonymous_ and delete records that are associated with them.
Just make a separate demo site that works exactly like the production one, but the DB gets reset once an hour to clean example data. The only change you need to make is a banner across the top of every page that says its a demo. There are several ways to do it, (modify your site theme, or maybe use frames) but basically you should only have to change the code in one place, instead of throughout the site.
You could setup a new environment demo on your database.yml, with read-only privileges for the User table, and an additional demo_database. Then place some checks on your code to see if your RAILS_ENV is on DEMO.
That way, you only need to work with the same codebase and just show whatever you feel like it.
You can deploy it as a separate app with its own database to a separate domain or subdomain and then check the domain to decide what options should be available. For instance if you put it on demo.example.com you would use:
if request.domain =~ /demo/
If you use Capistrano you can set it up to update both apps when you deploy so they are in sync.
I am developing a gallery which allows users to post photos, comments, vote and do many other tasks.
Now I think that it is correct to allow users to unsubscribe and remove all their data if they want to. However it is difficult to allow such a thing because you run the risk to break your application (e.g. what should I do when a comment has many replies? what should I do with pages that have many revisions by different users?).
Photos can be easily removed, but for other data (i.e. comments, revisions...) I thought that there are three possibilities:
assign it to the admin
assign it to a user called "removed-user"
mantain the current associations (i.e. the user ID) and only rename user's data (e.g. assign a new username such as "removed-user-24" and a non-existent e-mail such as "noreply-removed-user-24#mysite.com"
What are the best practices to follow when we allow users to remove their accounts? How do you implement them (particularly in Rails)?
I've typically solved this type of problem by having an active flag on user, and simply setting active to false when the user is deleted. That way I maintain referential integrity throughout the system even if a user is "deleted". In the business layer I always validate a user is active before allowing them to perform operations. I also filter inactive users when retrieving data.
The usual thing to do is instead of deleting them from a database, add a boolean flag field and have it be true for valid users and false for invalid users. You will have to add code to filter on the flag. You should also remove all relevant data from the user that you can. The primary purpose of this flag is to keep the links intact. It is a variant of the renaming the user's data, but the flag will be easier to check.
Ideally in a system you would not want to "hard delete" data. The best way I know of and that we have implemented in past is "soft delete". Maintain a status column in all your data tables which ideally refers to the fact whether the row is active or not. Any row when created is "Active" by default; however as entries are deleted; they are made inactive.
All select queries which display data on screen filter results for only "active records". This way you get following advantages:
1. Data Recovery is possible.
2. You can have a scheduled task on database level, which can take care of hard deletes of once in a way; if really needed. (Like a SQL procedure or something)
3. You can have an admin screen to be able to decide which accounts, entries etc you'd really want to mark for deletion
4. A temperory disabling of account can also be implemented with same solution.
In prod environments where I have worked on, a hard delete is a strict No-No. Infact audits are maintained for deletes also. But if application is really small; it'd be upto user.
I would still suggest a "virtual delete" or a "soft delete" with periodic cleanup on db level; which will be faster efficient and optimized way of cleaning up.
I generally don't like to delete anything and instead opt to mark records as deleted/unpublished using states (with AASM i.e. acts as state machine).
I prefer states and events to just using flags as you can use events to update attributes and send emails etc. in one foul swoop. Then check states to decide what to do later on.
HTH.
I would recommend putting in a delete date field that contains the date/time the user unsubscribed - not only to the user record, but to all information related to that user. The app should check the field prior to displaying anything. You can then run a hard delete for all records 30 days (your choice of time) after the delete date. This will allow the information not to be shown (you will probably need to update the app in a few places), time to allow the user to re-subscribe (accidental or rethinking) and a scheduled process to delete old data. I would remove ALL information about the member and any related comments about the member or their prior published data (photos, etc.)
I am sure it changing lot since update with Data Protection and GDPR, etc.
the reason I found this page as I was looking for advice because of new Apply policy on account deletion requirements extended https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=i71db0mv
We are using Ruby on Rails right now. Your answers seem a little outdated? or not or still useful right now
I was thinking something like that
create a new table “old_user_table” with old user_id , First name, Second name, email, and booking slug.
It will allow keep all users who did previous booking. And deleted their user ID in the app. We need to keep all records for booking for audit purpose in the last 5 years in the app.
the user setup with this app, the user but never booking, then the user will not transfer to “old_user_table” cos the user never booking.
Does it make sense? something like that?