In-App review feature in iPhone App

Question

I have recently seen in some Apps that review and rating (with 5 stars) can be integrated into the app. Does anyone have an idea how this is done? e.g. with a http request?

More specific: Can I create a view in my App with a UITextField and a Button, so that when the user writes his review in the textfield and click send, the review should be posted to the "Customer Reviews" in the App Store? and the rating should also be done inside the App similarly.

Answer 1

Yes, I did this with my own app. I have a rating button that hits the following method on click:

- (IBAction) reviewPressed: (id) source { 
NSString *str = @"itms-apps://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewContentsUserReviews?type=Purple+Software&id=341086403"; 
   [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:str]];
}

You will need to replace the ID in the URL with your own App ID. For new apps, this presents you with a chick-and-egg problem - you don't have an ID until the App goes live.

Answer 2

You can get your application ID by going in the process of submitting an app but choose to upload the app binary later. You will then get the app ID and thus add it in your code.