AppStoreを開く

Technical Q&A QA1629Launching the App Store from an iPhone application

Q: How do I launch the App Store from my iPhone application? Also, how do I link to my application on the store?
A: The -[UIApplication openURL:] method handles links to applications and media by launching the appropriate store application
for the passed NSURL object. Follow the steps below to obtain a link to an application, song, or album sold on iTunes,
and link to it from your iPhone application.

1. Launch iTunes on your Mac.

2. Search for the item you want to link to.

3. Right-click or control-click on the item's name in iTunes, then choose "Copy iTunes Store URL" from the pop-up menu.
Note: The returned URL is an itunes.apple.com link. However,
iPhone requires phobosURLs for direct linking to the App Store. Therefore,
you must replace itunes with phobosin the returned URL.

4. Open the modified URL using an NSURL object and the -[UIApplication openURL] method.


See Listing 1 for an example that launches the App Store from a native application.
Listing 1: Launching the App Store from an iPhone application.


NSString *iTunesLink = @"http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284417350&mt=8";

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:iTunesLink]];




If your application receives iTunes links at runtime—through an RSS feed generated fromhttp://itunes.apple.com/rss, for example—you can modify the URL with your code before opening it, as demonstrated in Listing 2.
Listing 2: Refactoring an iTunes store link at runtime.


NSString *iTunesLink = @"http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284417350&mt=8";
NSURL *iTunesURL = [NSURL URLWithString:iTunesLink];

// Produce a phobos.apple.com URL that will open the iTunes or App Store application directly
[NSURL URLWithString:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://phobos.apple.com%@?%@",
iTunesURL.path, iTunesURL.query]];



Some iTunes links, including iTunes Affiliate links, result in multiple redirections before reaching the appropriate store application.
You can process these redirects silently using NSURLConnection, and open the final URL once the redirects are complete.
This allows your application to transition right to the store without launching Safari.
Listing 3 demonstrates how to accomplish this.


Note: If you have iTunes links inside a UIWebView,
you can use this technique after intercepting the links with the
-[UIWebViewDelegate webView:shouldStartLoadWithRequest:navigationType:] delegate method.

Listing 3:

Processing iTunes Affiliate links in an iPhone application.


// Process a LinkShare/TradeDoubler/DGM URL to something iPhone can handle
- (void)openReferralURL:(NSURL *)referralURL {
NSURLConnection *conn = [[NSURLConnection alloc]
initWithRequest:[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:referralURL]
delegate:self startImmediately:YES];
[conn release];
}

// Save the most recent URL in case multiple redirects occur
// "iTunesURL" is an NSURL property in your class declaration
- (NSURLRequest *)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection
willSendRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request
redirectResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response {
self.iTunesURL = [response URL];
return request;
}

// No more redirects; use the last URL saved
- (void)connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection {
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:self.iTunesLink];
}