How do auto-renewable in-app-purchase subscriptions work?

Question

My application currently allows the user to subscribe to our service using in-app purchase auto-renewable subscription. The app provides images, 12 images per month, and every month the user needs to renew his/her subscription to see the new content.

I haven't work on the auto-renewable model before, so I have built a model to validate the receipt and it works, but should I check if the user subscription expired or not, and, if so, how?

Also, does the app store only allow magazines and newspaper items to be auto-renewable?

I haven't worked on the auto-renewable model before, so any help on this matter would be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

When a user signs up for an auto-renewable subscription, they continue to be charged until they manually cancel it. This is obviously great from a developer’s point of view, because it takes a lot more effort to cancel something than to just let it continue. You might already be familiar with a class of apps that use auto-renewable subscriptions already: Newsstand. Newsstand was first introduced in iOS 5, and allows content providers to easily distribute their newspapers and magazines. With it, Apple introduced the auto-renewable subscription model, which allows you to set a subscription duration and manage renewals automatically through the StoreKit framework. However, Apple has placed some very strict rules around auto-renewable subscriptions, meaning their usage is (usually) exclusive to Newsstand apps. So sadly, if you want to provide content or features for a limited duration, outside of Newsstand, then your only option is to use non-renewing subscriptions.

found that here: http://www.raywenderlich.com/36270/in-app-purchases-non-renewing-subscription-tutorial

Answer 2

An auto-renewable subscription is an iOS In-App Purchase category that allows an app to provide and charge for content or features over a set amount of time.

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Answer 3

Auto-Renewable In-App purchases continues charging the user (weekly/monthly/yearly etc.) until they cancel it.

You can check if the subscription has expired using the a validated receipt. It contains subscription expiration date and time.

If you want to lock content if subscription has not renewed, you may want to check receipt info against current date/time, on applicationDidBecomeActive delegate. There are open source libraries that lets you verify receipts locally as well.

And any kind of app can have Auto-Renewable In-App purchases, not just newsstand apps.