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I see many apps saying that "if you give 5 star rating to our app you will receive 1000 coins." The user can use these coins in the downloaded app. I want to implement the same feature.

How can we determine who has given 5 star rating to our iPhone app programmatically so that we can give them coins immediately after they have given the rating?

nalply
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Warrior
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2 Answers2

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There's no official API to get reviews in iTunes, though you can get them in iTunes Connect and there are apps that scrape them (though they can be fragile). The reviews in iTunes typically show a nick name rather than anything uniquely identifiable.

So I think the short answer is you can't, at least not with 100% reliability. Also, it strikes me as the kind of "gaming" of the review system that Apple would not approve of and may reject your app for attempting.

Stephen Darlington
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  • You can make any claim you like in the description, but it doesn't necessarily make it true... Maybe they require a receipt or screenshot, maybe they assume that when you press the "rate" button you actually give them a five star review. Either way, it's either manual or an honour system; I don't think there's a 100% reliable technical way of doing it. – Stephen Darlington Nov 17 '11 at 10:44
  • @stephen agreed, unless apple opens some sort of API : to work with ratings/itunes user information, which I doubt they ever will... or appstore will become be a stupid rating wars battlefield... (which is kinda already) – Vincent Guerci Nov 17 '11 at 11:24
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AFAIK, You have no way to verify that an user has rated your app. To rate an app, user use his iTunes account, which you have no information about from an app.

The most probable thing is that once you clicked rate in the app, you get the coins. In other words:

"if you give 5 star rating to our app you will receive 1000 coins"

is just a lie to incite ppl to rate 5... The correct label could be:

"if you tap that button you will receive 1000 coins, but we really would love that you give us 5 stars"...

But most ppl would not rate app with this...

Vincent Guerci
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  • i just saw this app description http://itunes.apple.com/in/app/angry-king-kong/id472653671?mt=8 – Warrior Nov 17 '11 at 10:28
  • Probably BS. Doing this technically just means too much work. It requires some scraping of itunes content. And more annoying it requires some user input confirmation. Like enter you itunes name... No way. Easier to lie to get a boost in ranks... get that game and try, you will see... – Vincent Guerci Nov 17 '11 at 11:19