I need to build an app for a system, which already has a subscription on its website. It looks like Apple doesn't allow to use any own subscriptions and forces to integrate any app with iOS in-app subscriptions.
Is it any way to integrate two subscription systems? The main problem is that users can manage iOS subscriptions via iTunes and I can't find whether it's possible to get information about this and to stop subscription in the existing system if it's stopped via iTunes.
So is it possible to get notifications about unsubscribed iTunes users?
Using third party subscriptions
First off, it is possible to support an existing subscription system in your app, but it must be in addition to the App Store subscriptions. Also you have to be very careful about the UI you use. You can't prompt users to bypass the App Store and purchase through your server, but you can offer existing subscribers the ability to sign in with credentials they may have previously obtained through your website.
That said, Apple can be fairly capricious in their rulings on what is and isn't allowed in the App Store. I have worked on apps that have done this sort of thing, but they have been for fairly well known magazine publications. There's no guarantee that they will allow it for everyone.
Detecting unsubscribed App Store subscriptions
As for using App Store subscriptions, when a user purchases a subscription in your app, they will receive a receipt in the SKPaymentTransaction object. This receipt should be posted to your backend server to make sure it is valid before you give the user access to anything. See the In-App Purchase Programming Guide for more details.
When you setup a subscription type, you specify how long that subscription lasts. So if you log the transaction date in the SKPaymentTransaction when you receive a receipt, you can determine exactly when that subscription should expire by adding the duration of the subscription to the transaction date.
If it's an auto-renewing subscription, you will receive a new receipt when the subscription is renewed. So once you have validated that with your backend server, you can update your expiry date based on the new transaction date. If you don't receive a new receipt before the first one expires, it's likely the user has cancelled their subscription.
On the backend, your server can also tell when a particular subscription will expire based on the response from the verification server. First there is the status code which will tell you whether the subscription has already expired, but there is also an expiry date returned in the decoded receipt which will tell you when it is expected to expire if it hasn't already.
For more details, see the Auto-Renewable Subscriptions documentation.
Testing auto-renewing subscriptions
It's worth noting that when you are testing auto-renewing subscriptions in the App Store sandbox environment, the length of the various subscription types is dramatically shortened to make it easier to test. For example a 1 week subscription lasts only 3 minutes in the sandbox environment. You can see the full list of times in the iTunes Connect Developer Guide.
So you want the people that have bought the service from the website to be able to use the app, exactly like if they had purchased it from in App Purchases and in App Purchases people to be able to join the service just like people that joined through the site? As far as I know, Apple doesn't allow you to pay through other services as you said, but let's say someone buys the service from the app. What should happen would be that the money will be transferred to the company. Then after the payment you should include some code doing what the site does after a new person has payed for the service, so create his account as a paid account. Then, the app should also have a login screen where the registered users (no matter where they registered from) will be able to login into the app and use the service. Now the problem is indeed that if the subscription is stopped through iTunes you would never know, though a way around this would be to make a check in the server of this company which should monitor the income coming from one account. Then if this user has stopped paying (or stopped the subscription) you would be able to stop the service from the app. And you should recheck the server for payment after the duration of the subscription has passed, let's say a weekly subscription should be checked every week. (Sorry I would do this a comment but I haven't got enough reputation for this)
Related
I just run into a problem with in-app auto-renewable subscription. The app contains this kind of subscription and the app can be used by multiple users but the subscription is bind to the apple id is used on the device. So if a different user log in to the app than the system say he has a valid subscription. If I log the subscribed users on my backend server than if a user without subscription log into the app can not make a new subscription according to the Apple's response because the apple id used on the device. An other problem if a keep track of the subscriptions on my backend server if the user unsubscribe on the apple's webpage I can't notify the server about if.
What do I do wrong? What is the right workflow for this case?
I hope do you understand my dilemma.
Thanks!
Your use case is absolutely valid and that's exactly how the subscriptions In-App purchase work with any platform (Apple/Google).
In case of Subscriptions in-app purchase the content delivery is entirely the responsibility of the app provider and not the platform. You have no direct way of identifying if the app user has been switched to a different user as you can't access the current logged in user on iTunes account on the device.
You need to manage this use case on your own by keeping some data locally on the device and maintain user purchase history but still that wouldn't solve the purpose 100%. When user will go for purchase of the subscription it will show the service as already subscribed unless the iTunes user account is also switched on the device.
You can keep track of the unsubscribed state from the backend as when the subscription is successful you will get a receipt from iTunes which you can use to save in your DB. You need to run a backend job on the server side to validate the saved receipt to check the updated receipt which will give you details if the subscription has been expired or not.
I work for a game developing company which releases at least one game a month. For our true fans we want to start providing a subscription to our games, so they can play all our games (on any platform) without constantly having to buy them.
The idea for iOS is to use the in-app auto-renewable subscription. This results into a receipt which we store in our backend. The backend can validate this receipt and provide the apps with information about the subscription of the user.
This system will solve a lot of problems: You can take the subscription in 1 game, and play all the games as well, on any device you like.
But now we come to the problem: After a month the receipt is not valid anymore, and we need to check in the iTunes store to see if the user still has a valid subscription.
My first idea was to use the "latest_receipt_info" field, to get the latest receipt and validate this. But according the documentation this feature should only be used for iOS 6 receipts:
"Only returned for iOS 6 style transaction receipts for auto-renewable
subscriptions."
source:
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/releasenotes/General/ValidateAppStoreReceipt/Chapters/ValidateRemotely.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40010573-
Even though I can actually still use this field with my brandnew iOS 10 receipt, I don't think it's smart to use it since it's deprecated.
(another source telling you shouldn't use it anymore: https://forums.developer.apple.com/message/156580#156580)
The advised solution of apple is to implement a SKPaymentTransactionObserver in the app. This will retrieve the latest receipt when it's available, and send this to the backend. Even though this is far from ideal, this could work... however:
This means the app has to be active to retrieve the latest receipt. And in our case it's very well possible a user takes a subscription in app1, and after a couple of days downloads app2, 3 and 4, but never uses app1 again. So in this case the latest receipt will never be fetched (because only the observer of app1 can access the receipt)
To fix this problem we should be able to fetch the receipts from this subscription from any app in our subscription group. But according the documentation on the apple site (https://developer.apple.com/app-store/subscriptions/ ) you can only access a subscription from 1 app, and you have to do the multiple app thing yourself:
You can offer auto-renewable
subscriptions to access multiple apps in your portfolio. Each app must
be approved to use auto-renewable in-app purchases and must be
published under the same developer name on the App Store.
In iTunes Connect, you’ll need to set up separate and equivalent
auto-renewable in-app purchases in each app offered in the multi-app
subscription so that users can subscribe from any app. To avoid users
paying multiple times for the same offering, you are responsible for
verifying that they are subscribers in one of the apps before showing
any subscription options. To do this, consider maintaining an account
management system in which users create an account with your business
to sign in to each app.
So is there any way to do what we want, without forcing the user to go back to the app he used to purchase the subscription every month?
On the last WWDC we went to StoreKit labs and personally asked StoreKit evangelist about this. We were told that the 'latest_receipt_info' field return by iTunes validateReceipt endpoint is exactly what we are suppose to use in order to check if the subscription was renewed or not.
This is not going to be deprecated in the near future but they do have plans for adding some server-to-server communication that solve few of the problems we ran into:
Your server will be able to get notification from Apple regarding any subscription renewal, cancellation, downgrades etc.
In the latest_receipt_info returned by the validateReceipt endpoint few fields will be added, providing information like whether the subscription will be renewed after current one is expired, whether there was a problem charging the user's credit card etc.
Sources:
WWDC 2017 Session 303 - What's new in StoreKit
WWDC 2017 Session 305 - Advanced StoreKit
I'm creating a service which allows users to register on any number of devices (web, Android, Roku, iOS, Apple TV), and then purchase a monthly subscription to watch video content. The subscription provides access to the entire catalog. I have my own subscription management API running on a server which I'd like to leverage as the source of truth so users can purchase a subscription on their iPad, login to the app on Roku, and continue watching where they left off.
Basically, Netflix.
Here are my options as far as I can tell:
Auto-renewing subscriptions: this is what Netflix uses today, but Apple doesn't provide an API or any set of webhooks around their payment platform, so I don't know how this option could work. My back-end service will have no idea when Apple automatically renews the subscription each month or if a user cancels their subscriptions.
Non-renewing subscriptions: users purchase the subscription inside
the app though IAP. Once purchase is complete, the app sync’s the
subscription to my back-end system. The app interfaces with my
back-end any time an entitlement check is required. When a user’s
subscription is about to expire, the app must present purchase
workflow again.
Import iTunes reports: won't work because it's not realtime (pull, not push) and doesn't tell me anything about cancelled subscriptions. I can only generate reports of new subscribers.
Receipt validation & push receipts to my service: won't work because it depends on the user actually using my app. Users could theoretically subscribe in my app, switch to Roku, and never open it again.
Skip IAP altogether and require users to subscribe via web.
Am I missing something? I'm really curious how Netflix is pulling this off.
For the initial subscription purchase:
User initiates a purchase on the iDevice
Device contacts Apple, Apple issues a receipt and sends it back to the device
The device sends the receipt to my server
The server validates that the receipt is legit through Apple's receipt validation API
Once the receipt is validated, the server stores it in my DB
The server responds to the app saying it's all good
To keep the server in sync with the iTunes subscription:
Setup a cron job to retrieve expiring receipts from the DB on a daily basis or something
Validate each receipt with Apple
Apple will respond with an updated version of the receipt that contains details regarding whether or not the subscription was canceled/renewed/etc.
Server replaces the original receipt with this updated version in the DB
Now if someone logs into their account on a Roku or some other device, the subscription can be honored because my DB is the source of truth.
I know this is old, but Apple recently introduced Status Update Notifactions which accomplishes what the OP asked for via webhooks:
Configure Apple to send notifications to your specified endpoint. (Apple's small guide)
Handle the JSON object that's sent via HTTP POST from the App Store and validate latest receipt.
Update/save data to your database.
Respond with a 200 status code to report a success.
You'll be able to handle the following notification types: INITIAL_BUY, CANCEL, RENEWAL, INTERACTIVE_RENEWAL, DID_CHANGE_RENEWAL_PREFERENCE
The documentation in the link above explains implementation and types in more detail.
I'm working on an iOS app that will use Apple's in-app purchasing framework to let the user create auto-renewing subscriptions.
I want my server to check periodically that none of the subscriptions have expired. Apple's Receipt Validation Programming Guide describes a verifyReceipt web service that appears to validate a single receipt.
However, if I want to bulk-verify my entire database every few days, is there a better way to do that than a storm of individual verifyReceipt calls?
You don't need to need to bulk-verify your entire database. A subscription is valid for a fixed duration. If the user cancels their subscription then this takes effect at the next renewal period, not immediately.
Apple customer service can refund a subscription if a user has a case (wrong product purchase is one example they give) but this would be a pretty low figure - and your app should also check for a valid subscription when it starts.
So you should only need to verify subscriptions that are known to be expiring "today".
To my knowledge there's no way to send multiple receipts in one bulk request to validate them in the iTunes servers... You have to send one by one. (Multiple requests)...
I don't know if how you are planing to solve this is the best approach. Apple has extended documentation on how to handle auto renewal subscriptions, most of the times you check the validity of the subscription in the app itself.
Check the in-app purchase documentation. It's a very good read if you plan to depend on in-app subscriptions for your business model:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/technotes/tn2259/_index.html
Although I searched a lot on this site and used Google as well, I cannot find a good solution for my problem.
I'm creating an app that offers a paid web service as an option. I would like give away a initial period of this service and link this to the purchase date of the app.
The Daily app is doing something similar. After downloading the app, you can read The Daily for two weeks for free. After that time, you have to subscribe.
Your help would be highly appreciated!
From Apple's developer guidelines:
Apps using IAP to purchase physical goods or goods and services used outside of the application will be rejected
If your premium web service is at all useable outside the app itself, in-app-purchase won't be a solution, so you'll have to implement the logic on your server, based on user names, etc.
If, however, it's simply a web service that iOS accesses—think if Instagram offered a paid upgrade in the days before their Android app—then you could use IAP subscriptions to do the trick. Again, from Apple's documentation:
Auto-renewable subscriptions are delivered to all of a user’s devices in the same way as non-consumable products. However, auto-renewable subscriptions differ in other ways. When you create an auto-renewable subscription in iTunes Connect, you choose the duration of the subscription. The App Store automatically renews the subscription each time its term expires. If the user chooses to not allow the subscription to be renewed, the user’s access to the subscription is revoked after the subscription expires. Your application is responsible for validating whether a subscription is currently active and can also receive an updated receipt for the most recent transaction.
As a side note, it looks like Apple are about to implement free trials, but haven't quite done it yet (there are some interesting hints in some of the documentation, but there's not an option when creating an IAP subscription yet).
I suggest you put some UI in that invites users to subscribe to the free service, and save that YES/NO answer along with the [NSDate date] in a defaults variable synced to iCloud. This means that it will be tied to their Apple ID, and can't easily be deleted by removing the app—next time they install it, you can restore that preference key.
Then, once the trial period is up, bring up your custom UI (since all the IAP UI is custom!) that gives people the chance to subscribe to an ongoing service using the auto-renewable subscription.