I'm working on episodic game for iOS and would like to have a menu with links to all the episodes. When the menu is shown, I want to check if the episodes are available in App Store or not, and depending on the answer enable a button to take the user to the game's App Store page.
Is there any way of checking the existence of an app in the App Store?
All the questions I found were about checking if the user had INSTALLED certain other app on their device, but all I want to know is if it exists in App Store.
I already tried canOpenURL but that returned true for any App Store url such as http://appstore.com/nononondsds
(Docs say "It does not guarantee that the full URL is valid.")
Thanks in advance!
You can use Apple API as follows:
https://itunes.apple.com/search?term=Skype
Where "term" would be the search criteria. This will give you a JSON encoded result.
For full documentation you can check Apple Search API
Hope this is what you're looking for.
Or you just need to your App's appstore URL to https://fnd.io/ and if it returns correct response mean your app is there on appstore
OK, first thing I'd do is listen to #AdamRichardson. It might be a better idea to release each episode as an in app purchase rather than a new app?
However, if you want to do your AppStore thing then I'd do it by having a server with data on it that you can inspect.
On the server have an API that returns a list of your Apps that are available on the app store.
This way you don't need to go to the app store to check you can just update your server.
Related
I want to create a different experience based on where they found the link that took them to the App Store. So when the user opens the app for the first time, I want to parse the params if there are any to display some message that continues the experience. Is this possible?
It's not possible, your app has no information about where the buyer came from when they found your app or when he bought it.
I want to find out how the user installed the app using what source (attribution).
For Android, it's possible to get the referrer's URL, but I haven't found an obvious way for iOS. There are external services such as AppsFlyer (http://support.appsflyer.com/entries/69796693-Accessing-AppsFlyer-Attribution-Conversion-Data-from-the-SDK-Deferred-Deep-linking-) that let's you do this.
I noticed that starting iOS 8, developers could append the publisher id and the campaign id to the App Store URL for iTunes Connect Analytics (http://www.applift.com/blog/new-era-attribution-analytics.html). Is it possible to get the campaign id and the publisher id inside the app? I couldn't find any API changes or resources on this.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
This has to be solved/implemented by Apple. If another company is coming out and saying they can solve this (Branch, etc.), they aren't being completely truthful.
The issue is that iTunes doesn't pass a referrer into the app, so without passing them the iOS IDFA on the click (redirect or out-of-bounds) every tracking method has to rely on Fingerprinting which drops off in attribution accuracy significantly past 24 hours.
This feature isn´t available in iTunesConnect as of yet (there´s no option for 'Analytics'). The only possibility I know is to sign up for the Affiliate Program (https://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/) and use the links generated there.
But maybe it will be available in iTC when iOS8 goes live...who knows!
And your second question: no, you can´t get the App Store URL via the iOS SDK. Apple suggests to copy it over from the AppStore in iTunes (via 'copy link'), e.g. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/youtube/id544007664?mt=8. When you open this link via
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:]
iOS will automatically open the AppStore.
Objective: i want to fetch my custom parameter(referrer) from iTunes link upon installation of my application in device.
iTunes links look somethings like this:
https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/complete-gym-guide-lite/id550449574?mt=8
If i append my parameter say(&referrer=xyz)at the end and i open this url in ios safari browser then it will prompt to download the application.
Confusion: will app store send my parameter(referrer) to my application on launch so that i can fetch it in my application and use it.
In case of Android play store link look like this: http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=&referrer=guid%3D%guid%
As you can see referrer parameter at the end of url. Once app is installed in device then play store will send this parameter to app using INSTALL_REFERRER broadcast receiver. We can use this parameter.
What i tried OR Other people doing for conversion tracking: Other people are simply sending static data to their server at the first time opening of app and maintain a flag in NSDefault to make sure that app does not send same data again. I can also do the same as well as alternate ways suggested in below links but i want to do something with custom parameter.
I have already seen below links:
iOS - track which ad campaigns my installs are coming from
Tracking iOS installs from multiple marketing sources
Please help me out.
As #Aditya said, for now, Apple is not sending any referrer (or params) from iTunes to installation.
The only way you have it's to use a third party sdk to get your installations.
I have been working on a own sdk to get this but the way to get any info it's really hard and not really confident to use it. So endly we used some third party which are using many techniques to getting this (as fingerprint data, App2App methods, etc...)
I have tested appsflyer sdk and facebook sdk, they work as expected, use this or any else you prefer.
Hope this helps
If i am making an client/server ios App, and i release a new version of that app on App store + other stores on internet. Then, how to manage to tell user to update the app ???
I searched on this...and i got two ways
1. To have web service tht returns current version of app and inform user to update it.
2. To check the URL of app on itunes and it returns info from which we cn get version (doubtful on this)
Because, if there is such an URL, we will have to write the URL address in code before uploading...Pls guide on this.
Thanks...
Don't reinvent the wheel! What you are looking for is iVersion by nicklockwood.
I want to programmatically track my app's search ranking on Apple's app store. Is there any API or website to do this, outside of the 'App Store' app on my iPhone?
the following websites allow searching the iOS app store.
https://theappstore.org
http://fnd.io
I'm not sure how the exact ranking is reflected, but Apple now provides an JSON API call that you can make.
https://affiliate.itunes.apple.com/resources/documentation/itunes-store-web-service-search-api/
This includes the ability to add in a callback parameter so you can even incorporate it into a web app without having to parse the results on your server.
The end API call would looks something like this:
http://itunes.apple.com/search?term=props&entity=software&country=US&callback=lkasdfj
In case users are still looking for this. Apple finally made it possible to just use the apple.com website:
https://www.apple.com/ios/app-store/ Use the magnifying glass in the top right to search the apps.
Once you find the app you want, there is a unique URL that you could use to grab information for tracking or other purposes as well.
You can't do anything other than look at the app information at this time (no way to initiate a remote install to your phone or leave a review, that has to be done on the device)
You can use the google advance search option like
site:itunes.apple.com/us/ "requires iOS 9 or later"
and then scrape the response.
You can use data.ai formerly App Annie. The free version will give you daily and overall search ranking for your app, and will help you immensely in ASO (App store optimization)