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I have a few questions about auto-renewable subscription. I apologize in advance if these questions are out there but I figured asking these questions here was my best place to start.

  1. Does anyone know the best tutorial on auto-renewable subscriptions? The ones I have found all had problems somewhere. The way I want it set up is that once the user purchases it will run a php script and update the database then redirect the user to the membership section.

  2. What is the best way to check if the user is still paying for their membership and haven't cancelled it? If cancelled then I will run a php script to update the database.

  3. If possible how can the user cancel the auto-renewable subscription from the app? Say the user deletes their account then in the backend Swift I want to also cancel the subscription.

halfer
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Brett Taylor
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1 Answers1

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These questions are pretty broad and subjective. There are a lot of ways this could be set up depending on your requirements.

1) The links below may help. You'll need to build an API you can send the purchase receipt from the client. Your server will handle receipt validation, update your database, etc. then return a successful response that will be your trigger to transition to the membership section.

2) With the receipt saved on your server, periodically poll Apple's /verifyReceipt endpoint to get the most up-to-date subscription status for the user. You can combine this with Apple server-notifications which can be another trigger for you to refresh the receipt.

3) The can't cancel their subscription from within your app, there's no developer APIs to manage subscriptions. They can only cancel from the Apple subscription management page. If you've implemented #2 correctly you'll know about these cancellations shortly after they occur. Remember that when a user cancels they should still be able to access their subscription until the end of the billing period they have paid for, unless the cancellation was due to a refund.

Some helpful links to get you started:

Overview on handling auto-renewable subscriptions: iOS Subscriptions are Hard

What to build in your server: How to Build a Great iOS In-app Purchase Subscription Server

(Alternatively, since you're on a deadline you can use a hosted solution like RevenueCat that handles all of this and more right out of the box)

enc_life
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