Cocoa Touch™ for iPhone® OS 3

Chapter 34. Expanding Your Application Using the In-App Purchase Support

In This Chapter

Learning the business models you can use with In-App purchasing

Understanding the types of things you can sell

Integrating a store with your app

Making purchases using Store Kit

Displaying prices in the localized currency

One of the most exciting new features in iPhone OS 3 for developers is the addition of in-app purchase support. Using it, you can leverage the power of the built-in App Store purchase system to allow the user to purchase additional content for your application. This content can be in the form of additional levels, additional features, and so forth. This capability enables new kinds of business models to be developed around iPhone OS and the App Store.

In this chapter, you're going to take a look at how to work with the in-app purchase system. You're going to see what kinds of products you can sell through your application, and how you build that capability into your application. You're also going to see how you work with the Store Kit API for making purchases.

When you are finished, you should be able to deploy an application that includes in-application purchases.

Knowing the Types of Things You Can Sell

The first thing that you need to know when working with the in-app purchase system is what kind of content you can sell. There are three categories of content that you can sell as in-app purchasable content: non-consumables, consumables, and subscriptions.

Non-consumable content is content ...