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If I offer an in-app Non-consumable purchase (say a book, or a song) within my app and then 2-3 months after it has been released I realize that there is something wrong with my digital content, Can I do an update of the digital content? So if I had a digital article as an in-app purchases for $1.99 and sold 1,000 copies, then I realized that I have a spelling error on page 3. Would I be able to upload an updated article that would go out to all the people who bought the article and prevent people from downloading the old copy? If not, how is this situation handled in the real world? I have looked in apples doc, but cannot find an answer.

Edit: Assume I am using the new io6 feature of hosting the content through apple.

Kyle
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Beleg
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4 Answers4

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Yes, as a matter of fact, provided that you do a few steps, you can keep track and systematically, efficiently keep track of what is downloaded.

1.Yes it's possible. Provided you keep a track of who has bought what pack (ie. keep a bool value as an NSUserDefault), then they will still have access to it (even if you add more stuff/levels to it).

2.It depends what you mean by notified; they will know if they read the update comments when they install the update. Also you could just choose to alert them when the load the app after the update - your call.

3.If you're submitting the code Apple will review it. Just think of it like any other update to an app.

This is taken directly from here: Update in-app purchase content for iOS app?

After you have updated your content for the app store, you can allow your users to Restore Purchases and obtain the updated content!

Overall, have a mechanism to keep track of the version of the in-App purchases' version and then update when needed!

There is always, apple's own documentation: Here you go! :)

I hope this is clear and helpful!

EDIT: After checking the user's content version number and finding that it's outdated, you would call the method (by the way, you would probably implement this checking mechanism in your app delegate.

[[SKPaymentQueue defaultQueue] restoreCompletedTransactions];

This would restore the transactions, but make sure you also need to include the rest of the implementation code!

I assume you know the code to restore in app purchases, but if not, here are a couple good links!

Restore already bought in-app-purchases on iPhone?

http://www.iosdeveloperguide.com/in-app-purchase-heads-up-to-avoid-app-rejection/

http://appotography.com/2011/07/06/restoring-purchases-on-iphone-and-ipad/

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waylonion
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  • So I just alert the user that they need to restore purchases to obtain the updates to the in app content? And then when they do that it will re download the in app content from apple? Is there no way to have them automatically download the update without them having to be prompted to do a restore? – Kyle May 01 '13 at 04:50
  • I would add a checking mechanism in my app delegate to have the app determine if its in app content is out of date. Then you would call your own methods like "updateMyInApps" and then implement the restoration code. Please refer to my edit for some added info! – waylonion May 01 '13 at 14:13
  • how can i add a feature to buy more alarm tones , with in app purchase ?, is it possible ? – Mr.G Jan 18 '16 at 07:36
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About AppStore Hosted Content

I have not tried, but browsing inside Apple doc, I've found this which confirms that you can upload multiple versions of a digital content hosted by Apple.

"You can have multiple versions of hosted content, but each one needs to be approved by Apple before it can be purchased by users."

Also, you can check this and this tutorials, that shows that you have to specify the Content Version and IAP ProductIdentifier in the ContentInfo.plist when you create an App Store Hosted Content with Xcode.

IAPHostedContentPlist

How to notify the users that content has changed

This depends of how you implement your purchase system, the content delivery, and how you keep track of the "state of your purchased products". Usually we keep track of the version of the purchased products, thats means, we save the product_id with the content version when the purchased content is downloaded. We can save this data in files or inside a DB locally. Also, you don't have to worry about non downloaded (and non purchased) products, those do not need an update. When you update your in-app store with the last information of your available products (via update button, or app launch, or whatever you implemented) you should compare the last content versions with those you have downloaded, then you can notify the user that an update of his purchased product is available. Finally, you have to enable the download for that product.

LuisEspinoza
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This all depends on how you make the content available to the user. When the user makes their original purchase of the in-app content, where does the content come from?

If it is part of the app bundle, then the only way to get updated content to these users is to submit an update to your app that includes the updated content. When the user installs the updated app, they will see the updated content.

If, upon purchase, the app downloads the content from your server then you can build in a mechanism in your app that checks your server for updated versions of the content. If it detects there is an update, and the user has the IAP, then the app can download the updated content.

Edit: This doesn't cover the new iOS 6 feature of Apple hosted downloadable content.

rmaddy
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  • I want to have Apple host the downloadable contnet. – Beleg Oct 18 '12 at 17:59
  • Oddly there is nothing on the iTunes Connect FAQ page or the iTunes Connect Developer Guide on this. It only briefly talks about the initial upload of the content package but that's it. – rmaddy Oct 18 '12 at 18:03
  • I know. I want to make sure that If I create a peice of contnet, and need to modify it later, that I can. – Beleg Oct 18 '12 at 21:31
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For the above problem: please have a look at the following urls for separate things:

Following link is the link to the SKDownload API: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/StoreKit/Reference/SKDownload_Ref/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40011851

Following link is the link to a great post which explains the working of SKDownload API: How to download In-App hosted content?

Now in your position we can follow the following steps:

  1. Push another package on the Apple Account which is to be hosted (with corrections).
  2. Push an update the app on the App store with the following changes: (This handles any new download from the new users.) a. Update your code of the InAppPurchase with the new identifier of the file

  3. Now we have to handle the old users, we can consider the following two approaches: a. We can show the user a restore button, by tapping which the user would be downloading the article again.

    b. In iOS for things to go automatically to all existing users we do have a mechanism of push notifications, on the receiving of this the user would be triggering the event to again download the data from the Apple Hosting.

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Ravi Dalmia
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