Some questions about apple in-app purchases

[vincent_1982]

Hello,

I would like to ask you some questions about in-app purchases in the itunes store.

I would like to create an application and put that application on the itunes store.

The application itself will be a "container" and will contain 1 book. The application will be free.

So far so good. Now i want to use apple's in-app purchases to sell other books from within the application.

So they will see a new book in the app and will be able to buy it.

Now to my question:

I would like to have books available as seperate .swf files (.swf files because i want to add some animation). So people can go to the itunes store and the swf will be downloaded to their device.

Will Apple actually allow this? And if not, does anyone know how i could achieve what i want?

[rewb0rn]

Hi, you can load swf files, but they will be stripped from all code. So if it is only about having movieclips without code, it should work (though I havent done this myself). If you need custom code for each book, you will have to include it within the main application.

[vincent_1982]

What do you exactly mean by "stripped from all code"? An swf is compiled so i'm not sure how they can strip it? But if they can, this means i cant have simple gotoandplay() methods or eventlisteners for buttons or anything like that?

[rewb0rn · Accepted solution]

Yes, that is what it means.. Remember you are not playing in the classic Air environment, so your application just will be unable to run any code from any loaded swfs. The reason for this is obvious: Apple does not want any developer to be able to extend applications or provide additional content without having it approved by Apple / making money with it.

In your case I would recommend you to include all books hard linked through swcs and then just unlock them whenever the user pays.

[vincent_1982]

And what with books that have yet to be created? Can you add them through an update then?

[rewb0rn]

Yes, you would just submit a new version of your application to itunes and it would go through the same review process and hopefully get approved as a new version of your app.

[vincent_1982]

You have been very helpfull, thank you.

[Colin Holgate]

I just wanted to add that I'm in the process of doing exactly the same thing that you are doing (one book, free app, in-app purchase other books, that would be swfs). I know about the inability to have code in those swfs, but I'm going to try doing it that way anyway.

My book shell app will know everything about those swfs, and my hope is to control which page, and which animations on that page, are played. I think it should work.