I am developing an iPhone application which will install few third party applications in an enterprise. I have the information about the bundle IDs. Is there a way to check if the application is already installed, using some system APIs? Currently the application gets installed again, overwriting the current installation. I need to prevent this some how. (Apple's AppStore application disables the installation option if the app is already installed.)
I think this is not possible directly, but if the apps register uri schemes you could test for that.
A URI scheme is for example fb://
for the facebook app. You can register that in the info.plist of your app. [UIApplication canOpenURL:url]
will tell you if a certain url will or will not open. So testing if fb://
will open, will indicate that there is an app installed which registered fb://
- which is a good hint for the facebook app.
// check whether facebook is (likely to be) installed or not
if ([[UIApplication sharedApplication] canOpenURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"fb://"]]) {
// Safe to launch the facebook app
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"fb://profile/200538917420"]];
}