AppShowcase (Objective-C)

• A swift version is available at this link: https://github.com/partho-maple/AppShowcase_Swift

Ever wanted a way of easily showing all your iOS applications to your app users ? AppShowcase does just that and helps you gain the attention you need to gain more app downloads. AppShowcase allows you to cross promote your iOS applications in all of your iOS applications.

##Features:

• Supports the latest App Store API – No need to host any app images, info, data…. All data is downloaded live from Apple.
• AppShowcase can only show apps from developer accounts which are live on the App Store. If you are new developer and are still waiting for your first app to go live on the App Store, then AppShowcase will only work once your first app has gone live.
• AppShowcase can be imported and used in any Storyboard or XIB based iOS application.
• Super easy to implement into your new or existing iOS applications.
• Universal support: Supports iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices.
• Social app sharing: Includes support for sharing via Facebook, Twitter and Email.
• Works with iOS 8 and higher.
• Easy to customise to your app design needs.
• Gain more app downloads!

##Screenshot:

Requirements

• iOS 8.0+
• Xcode 7+
• Swift 2.2+

Usage

Step One

• Import the following frameworks into your project

• The next thing you will need to do, is to import the AppShowcase code, UI and image files into your new or existing Xcode project. Open the AppShowcase folder and you will 'AppShowcase Files'. Import that folder into your project. Once you have imported the 'AppShowcase Files', you will need to import the required images into your “Images.xcassets” directory. folders must be imported into your Xcode project otherwise AppShowcase will not function.

Step Two

• AppShowcase downloads all its data directly from the App Store. So the next thing you will need to do is to set your developer name so that AppShowcase knows which applications to show.

Open the ‘AppShowcaseView.h’ file.

• Edit the line of code called ‘DEV_NAME’ and replace ‘parthobiswas’ with your developer name.

// Replace 'parthobiswas' with your developer name. make sure your
// developer name is typed like the above with no spaces or capital letters.
#define DEV_NAME @"parthobiswas"

• The next thing you will need to do is to add a button/action/method/etc in your application which will open the AppShowcase view. Some developers like to add a ‘more apps’ button in the info page section of there apps. This is up to you. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will be opening the AppShowcase view with a simple IBAction like so:

-(IBAction)open_gallery {

    UIStoryboard *gallery = [UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:@"AppShowcase" bundle:nil];
    AppShowcaseView *view = [gallery instantiateInitialViewController];
    [self presentViewController:view animated:YES completion:nil];
}

Step Three

• AppShowcase requires network access in order to be able to access App Store data. On devices running iOS 9 (and higher), you may get a warning along the lines of: “Application Transport Security has blocked a cleartext HTTP (http://) resource load since it is insecure. Temporary exceptions can be configured via your app's Info.plist file”. There are two ways to handle this, you can either:

  1. Disable App Transport Security (Easy - Less secure).

  2. Or specify certain website URLs (such as the iTunes API URL) in the Info.plist file (A bit harder as you have to specify all the website

links that you want to access in your app - More secure). For more information about this, take a look at this detailed Stack Overflow post: http://stackoverflow.com/a/30732693/1598906

• For the purposes of this tutorial, we will be using the lazy method (hehe). Click on your Xcode project in the left hand navigation bar and then select “Info”.

• Then add the following to your plist file:

Author

Partho Biswas, partho.maple@gmail.com

License

AppShowcase is available under the MIT license.

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request