We have a problem with Apple subscription callback on Sandbox environment. When I purchase an auto-renewable subscription on Sandbox env, apple sends first callback only after 1-2 min. It's ok. But when the first expiration period ends apple not always notify us about extending a subscription. But we should receive notification_type = RENEWAL always at the end of the expiration period. Sometimes we receive notifications sometimes we don't. Do you know how can we check where is the problem? Maybe Apple has some troubles because we couldn't find any problems on our side.
RENEWAL events are sent when a subscription has expired, then later, the user starts the subscription again.
See: Apple Subscription Notifications are Almost Useless
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I generally understand receipt validation on In App Purchases. Most libraries make this as simple as calling a method.
I'm not so clear on how subscriptions work though -- specifically, how can I detect if the subscription is cancelled?
Subscriptions are cancelled on Apple's iTunes interface only. How is my server supposed to know that a subscription was cancelled?
From the Apple docs:
The user can also cancel their subscription by disabling auto-renew and intentionally letting their subscription lapse. This action triggers the App Store to send your server a status update notification of type DID_CHANGE_RENEWAL_STATUS. Your server can parse the auto_renew_status and the auto_renew_status_change_date to determine the current renewal status of the subscription.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/in-app_purchase/subscriptions_and_offers/handling_subscriptions_billing#3221914
The answer from Jacob is correct for the case that the user disables the auto-renewal of his subscription. If the user requested a refund from Apple and they cancel the subscription for him. Your server will receive a CANCEL notification and the receipt will contain a cancellation_date field.
You need to handle both of those cases, because when the user cancels (deactives the auto-renewal) his subscription, it is still valid (till it expires). When Apple customer support cancels the subscription, then it is from this point on invalid.
Note: the CANCEL notification is also triggered when a user up- or downgrades to a different subscription of the same subscription group. See this answer for more details on that.
We have setup Apple’s Server notifications for auto-renewable subscriptions. Last month we still able to get all notification type(INITIAL_BUY, RENEWAL, INTERACTIVE_RENEWAL).
Recently when we tested with sandbox (1 year subscription), we receive only 'INITIAL_BUY' server notifications, we were expect to receive 'RENEWAL' server notifications after 1 hour, but we are not getting those notifications.
Question:
I just want to confirm that is it a new notifications service that only send us 'INITIAL_BUY' notifications? And there are no server-to server notification if the renewal is successful?
Note:**
We did validate receipt with verifyReceipt server to check latest_receipt_info.
Correct. According to this technical note (https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2413/_index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40016228-CH1-SUBSCRIPTIONS-MY_SERVER_PROCESS_RARELY_RECEIVES_RENEWAL_NOTICES_WHEN_THE_AUTO_RENEWING_SUBSCRIPTION_RENEWS_)
The App Store attempts to charge the user account 24 hours before an auto-renewing subscription expires. If the renewal is successful, there is no server-to server notification because the auto-renewing subscription did not enter into the expired state.
You have to actively call Apple's receipt validation endpoint on or around the expiration date of each receipt (and possible for a few days after that) to fetch the renewal receipts. Apple will not notify your servers.
We are implementing server side receipt validation for auto renewable subscription. Now when a user turn off the subscription or when it auto renew there is no notification send from apple server to our server. We want to poll apple server when the subscription is about to expire. So how can we do this?
Is there a way to schedule such polling at specific date ?
First when any in app purchase made you need to store receipt data after validating it. Also you need to store expire date of that particular purchase which you will get by receipt validation.
Now create a crone job in your server to validate auto renew purchase, crone job time interval is up to you as per your project need but let say for example take 1 hours. In the crone job you need to select only those record which expire time with in next 6 hours(You can change this time as per your need). Then again validate this receipt and if purchase get auto renew then you will get list of receipt. You will get always new receipt in the list whenever purchase auto renew. In this you will get new expire time. Suppose you are not getting any new receipt then it means user has cancel subscription
You would need Receipt validation.
If your app offers auto-renewable subscriptions, you can receive server notifications from the App Store about key events by setting up an optional URL that links to your server.
Before sending a notification to your server, the App Store will try to establish a secure network connection with your server by using App Transport Security (ATS) protocols. If a secure connection cannot be established, notifications will not be sent to your server. See Requirements for Connecting Using ATS to learn more about security requirements.
After a secure HTTPS connection has been established, the App Store will deliver JSON objects through an HTTP post to your server for key subscription events. See the In-App Purchase Programming Guide to learn more about the contents of this HTTP post.
Use server notifications together with Receipt Validation to validate a customer's current subscription status and provide them access to content or services from within your app.
For more info : Link
Not get notifications such as cancel as these notifications are only sent when a subscription is canceled by Apple directly.
The renewal notification, "Automatic renewal was successful for an expired subscription. Check Subscription Expiration Date to determine the next renewal date and time." In general, iTunes will attempt to charge the user account a day before an auto-renewing subscription is scheduled to expire. If the renewal is successful, there is no server-to-server notification because the auto-renewing subscription did not enter into an expired state. There is no support at present to simulate this event in the sandbox environment.“
Read more: https://forums.developer.apple.com/message/283579#283579
I created an API to be called by Apple webhook to work with subscription. I've set the API url in Itunes to be called by the webhook.
According to Apple help site https://help.apple.com/app-store-connect/#/dev7e89e149d in regards to the Testing Auto-Renewable Subscription, when testing auto renewable subscriptions in the test environment, the Apple webhook will make a call to the API after 5 minutes if I select 1 month subscription duration.
But the thing is, after making first purchase, apple webhook doesn't follow up call to the API that I created to renew the subs. Even after I waited for more than 5 minutes. So I can't do any processing from the API to renew user subs in the database.
Is there some configuration that I had to make in order to test the auto renew and make apple webhook call the API to renew the sub?
We've found that Apple's subscription update webook calls are rather unreliable.
Based on experience:
Don't count on Apple to notify you of renewals. The notification may arrive arbitrarily late (often leaving a "gap" in time), or not at all. We've resorted to retaining and retrying the original iTunes-provided receipt to revalidate renewals at the end of subscription periods --the expiration dates will change to account for the renewal.
Don't count on Apple to notify you of cancellations, either. Same as above, calculate subscription duration, and retry receipts at the end of a period (the expiration date will NOT be updated if the subscription is cancelled).
Generally, this involves mapping the additional transactions/in_apps that are returned with the retried receipt to the original_transaction_id --and updating the expires_at accordingly on your end.
Hope this helps!
Update: In WWDC2020 Apple announced that they add a new notification type called DID_RENEW which will be sent after any successful auto-renew. More info on that in this video, starting at around 16:00.
Original answer:
I can't find the page you linked to, however this page may shed light on the subject (emphasis by me):
The App Store attempts to charge the user account 24 hours before an auto-renewing subscription expires. If the renewal is successful, there is no server-to server notification because the auto-renewing subscription did not enter into the expired state. However, in the few cases that iTunes is unable to renew the subscription (generally there was a connection problem with the credit card server) and the auto-renewing subscription is not renewed before the expiration_date passes, the auto-renewing subscription is technically considered expired. iTunes may continue to attempt to renew the subscription. If iTunes is successful, then the RENEWAL event is sent.
Meaning, you're not supposed to receive notifications for renewals, but only for cases where the subscription became expired and only then renewed. This might be the case for sandbox renewals as well.
I have a few questions that will help me understand things better if answered:
Is there a way to differentiate between a fresh subscription and the renewal of a previously-purchased one?
Does the subscription go through the renewal process immediately after the expires_date is hit? It seems that sometimes (in the Sandbox, at least) my subscriptions will renew 30-60 seconds before the expires_date.
Does the renewal always happen at a consistent time after the expires_date is hit? For instance, if I launch my app and expires_date has been passed, when will the renewal occur (assuming the user didn't cancel)? Or rather, when will my app know that the renewal has occurred on Apple's end?
Scenario: app is launched and expires_date has passed for one of my subscriptions. Should I send a receipt to Apple to see if that subscription was renewed, or should I wait a couple seconds to see if the renewal process occurs?
Thanks!
I will attempt to answer my own question:
To do this, I store expires_date of the subscription in NSUserDefaults once the initial purchase is completed. When the subscription expires, I remove the object from NSUserDefaults. This allows me to determine if any subsequent subscriptions are a renewal (expires_date exists in NSUserDefaults - update with new expires_date upon renewal completion) or a fresh purchase (expires_date does not exist, either because it was removed upon a previous subscription expiration or the product has never been purchased).
This question is irrelevant - what I do is compare expires_date stored in NSUserDefaults to current_date every time the app enters the foreground. If current_date has passed expires_date, I call my server to verify the receipt with Apple. Apple returns the status of the subscription to my server (0 means the subscription is valid, 21006 means it has expired, and all others are trivial as far as my app is concerned) and the server forwards it to my app. In this manner, it doesn't matter how long it takes my app to be alerted of a renewal (aka the subscription has already technically renewed through Apple but my app doesn't yet know) because I know for certain whether the subscription has expired or not.
In the sandbox, renewals seem to be very untrustworthy. Sometimes my subscriptions will renew five or six times (the standard, according to Apple), sometimes once, and sometimes not at all. For the record, the 7 day subscriptions don't renew a lot more often than the 30 day subscriptions. It would be nice to have the same reliability in the sandbox as we do in the live servers so I can write code accordingly (and stress less), but I digress. The only sure-fire and consistent way I've discovered to make the subscriptions alert my app that they've renewed is when expires_date has passed && I force close/relaunch my app. Sometimes toggling between background and foreground states works, but in my experience this is much less reliable - I have a feeling that this would work [better] in the live servers though.
What I do is check with my server (which in turn checks with Apple) when I notice that expires_date has passed. So it doesn't matter if the renew occurs before/after/never, because my server tells me for certain the status of the subscription.
I hope this information helps others who have the same questions I did!