A link to my iPhone apps that works correctly?

Question

I'm trying to put a button in my iPhone app that will move the user to the appStore and list ALL of our apps.

This wastes time loading safari... then the music store... then the appStore:

itunes.com/apps/OurCompanyName

This tries to load Music Store... and never reaches the app store at all:

itunes.apple.com/us/artist/OurCompanyName/id27628833

This link shows many other company's apps along with ours:

ax.search.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/search?media=software&submit=media&term=OurCompanyName

Apple's own "link maker", even with the correct "id#" doesn't work.

The link we cut/paste directly from our "more apps by this developer" in iTunes doesn't get directly back to that app-list.

Isn't there a simple "direct to the appStore link" that will list all the apps by ONE company?

We do NOT want a clickable link for a browser on a PC. We need a link from a UIButton inside our app.

Answer 1

Does the link on AppStore work for you?

For example, the Apple Bumper app is at: http://itunes.apple.com/hk/app/iphone-4-case-program/id383941000?mt=8

When viewing the app in iTunes, right-click on the "Apple Inc." text will give you an option to copy a link, which is: http://itunes.apple.com/hk/artist/apple-inc/id284417353

Answer 2

Well Its doable. Use the UIButton as a way to link to safari and give the url of the code that launches a page or search.

This for example works

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString: @"http://ax.search.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/search?media=software&submit=media&term=Playdom"]];

What about developing one html page with all your apps or make it inside the app and use that.

Try refining your search or inside of your descriptions put something pretty unique in all of your apps

Say developed by CompanyiPhoneDev or whatever and search for that!

also I think there is a way to link to an iphone app store search

Tada! Hope that helps!

Answer 3

Another way : http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/12/linking-to-the-stars-hacking-itunes-to-solicit-reviews.ars

has a lot of info like

Searching iTunes relies on the Search web object application or "woa". This is located at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa. You can access this service via your web browser and it will redirect to iTunes, which will handle the request. Here's what a typical search request looks like: view plainprint?

1. http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/search?WOURLEncoding=ISO8859_1&lang=1&output=lm&country=US&media=software&term=ad+hoc+helper

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/search?WOURLEncoding=ISO8859_1&lang=1&output=lm&country=US&media=software&term=ad+hoc+helper

If you paste this URL into Safari, iTunes launches and displays the search results for the phrase "ad hoc helper."

You can perform the same search directly from the iPhone. The following code snippet shows you how to escape the URL and use the UIApplication openURL: method to switch control from your application to App Store, opening its search window with the phrase you pass. I have put the search phrase into a separate string here so you can easily generalize this operation.

1. • (void) doSearch
2. {
3. NSString *search = @"ad hoc helper";
4. NSString *sstring = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/search?WOURLEncoding=ISO8859_1&lang=1&output=lm&country=US&term=%@&media=software", [search stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]];
5. [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL: [NSURL URLWithString:sstring]];
6. }