An easy way to open the AppStore within your app

Using SKStoreProductViewController from Apple

Photo by James Yarema on Unsplash

Similar to SFSafariViewController, SKStoreProductViewController opens a modal that will allow your user to interact with a product in the App Store without leaving your app.

Usage

You need a few things:

1. Import StoreKit
2. Create an SKStoreProductViewController instance and set its delegate
3. Indicate a specific product by passing its iTunes item identifier to the loadProduct(withParameters:completionBlock:) method.
4. A simple implementation of SKStoreProductViewController delegate

Implementation

Let's assume you have a view controller from which you want to show the SKStoreProductViewController . We are going to exemplify that with the following code:

The intention would be to call openAppStore() after an user interaction, such as tapping a button.

The result should be something like this:

Limitations

• The SKStoreProductViewController class doesn’t support subclassing or embedding, and must be used as-is.
• Will Thrown SKUnsupportedPresentationException if the app attempts to use an unsupported presentation mode for SKStoreProductViewController, such as embedding it as a child view controller or attempting to use it in a popover.

Conclusion

When we are in the need to open or display external resources such as a URL or PDF or an App Store product, I consider it imperative to show that within your app. Keeping the user in your ecosystem is a much better experience than making them jump between apps. In general, makes the user experience of your app more immersive and makes your app flows more fluid and with fewer interruptions.

Source

• Apple Documentation

Every great developer you know got there by solving problems they were unqualified to solve until they actually did it.

— Patrick McKenzie

Thanks for reading and hope you find this article helpful. As usual, any feedback or comment is welcome.