iOS app update notification

Question

How does the iOS app update mechanism work? How to tell user that application on Appstore has been updated?Do i have to write the functionality in the code to show the update popover or is it handled by Appstore to show notification to user that app has been updated. Is there any documentation provided by apple for this?

Answer 1

1. Apple provides an existing API to get the latest app information from your app on the App Store: http://itunes.apple.com/jp/lookup/?id=app_id

Ex: http://itunes.apple.com/jp/lookup/?id=1005582646

Ex for a US app: http://itunes.apple.com/lookup/?id=myAppIDNumberFromTheAppStore

Note that this is separate from the App Store Connect API. If you use that, you'll need to generate a token before making the request. Please review the documentation on the API first or you will get a response with empty results.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appstoreconnectapi

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appstoreconnectapi/generating_tokens_for_api_requests

The response of the iTunes API has a "version" field that is within the "results" field. It has the version number of the latest build on the App Store.

In AppDelegate->didFinishLaunchingWithOptions, you can call the above API.

2. The way to get current version on user's device:

Obj-C.

NSString *currentAppVersion = [[[NSBundle mainBundle]
    infoDictionary] objectForKey:@"CFBundleShortVersionString"];

Swift (4.2)

var currentAppVersion = Bundle.main.infoDictionary?["CFBundleShortVersionString"] as? String

Now you can compare the version number from 1 and 2 to show an alert or notification to the user when there is an updated app on the App Store.