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Version: 6.1.0

App Store

The AppStore Service provides access to Product / Pricing / Promotion features, as well as integrations with supported AppStores.

This service replaces the deprecated Product Service for purchases and product / pricing data. Currency operations have been moved to the new VirtualCurrency Service.

It includes APIs for:

  • Handling In-app Purchases (IAP)
  • Querying Products and Promotions

API Summary​

Verifying In-app Purchases​

The specifics of processing in-app purchases from platform to platform vary slightly, but the overall flow is as follows:

  1. Client app requests the list of products to display from brainCloud ( GetSalesInventory ), and keeps each product's payload and store product ID / SKU (priceData.id; for Apple, the itunesId in priceData.ids)
  2. Client app displays the in-app store to the user. Each item keeps its store product ID and its payload
  3. User selects a store item to purchase
  4. For Google Play, Apple and Meta Horizon, client app caches the selected item's payload with brainCloud ( CachePurchasePayloadContext ). Other stores skip this step
  5. Client app invokes the purchase API from the AppStore. AppStore performs the purchase, and sends back a response with the receipt to the client
  6. Client sends the receipt to brainCloud for validation ( VerifyPurchase )
  7. brainCloud performs a back-channel verification of the receipt with the AppStore, and uses the receipt info together with the cached payload to resolve the purchase to the proper product item, with the proper pricing, promotions and campaign info. If all is good, it makes any required changes to virtual currency balances
note
  • Step 4 applies to Google Play, Apple and Meta Horizon, and is recommended for every purchase on those stores: the payload identifies the product, and records the price, promotion and any live-ops campaign the user was shown. It is also what tells several products sharing one store product ID apart, so a purchase of a shared ID without one is rejected by default. Other stores do not use the cached payload — see CachePurchasePayloadContext for details.

The following calls request the list of products for sale:

This method caches the payload of the item being purchased:

  • CachePurchasePayloadContext - for Google Play, Apple and Meta Horizon purchases: call it when the user selects an item, before starting the store purchase

This method is used to confirm store receipts:

  • VerifyPurchase - standardized receipt verification for Apple, Google, Facebook and Steam purchases

Performing Two-part Purchases​

Some AppStores, like Steam, do a real-time two-part purchase. The following new API methods handle this requirement:

Store Configuration and User Tokens​

Some stores, like Xsolla, need configuration and a user token on the client to open their checkout. The following API methods provide them:

  • GetStoreInfo - Returns the store's client-side configuration.
  • GetUserToken - Returns a store user token (JWT) for the current user.

Promotions​

In addition to the above purchase flows, the app can also query to see if any promotions are currently active (for display in banners, etc.), using the GetEligiblePromotions call – and can make manual adjustments to virtual currency balances.

The promotions API(s) are:

Last updated on by Jason Liang