需要在iOS中安装第二个应用

Question

I have a 'core' app which performs some functions which are available to other apps via a URL call, eg core://get_result [as per this: http://x-callback-url.com/examples/ ]

I want to allow 3rd parties to develop by calling my core, or to produce more elaborate apps myself which call the core from within a wrapper. We have developed and tested this approach.

I want to use this approach because:

• we don't want to expose our core code to 3rd party developers
• we don't want users who install multiple apps that use the same core to have multiple huge downloads (rather than 1 big core and several smaller wrappers)
• we want to keep tight control on the content in the core (for regulatory reasons) but are more relaxed about the wrapper
• we stop people tweaking the core code this way
• potentially we can open this to 'designers' using HTML5 rather than developers too...

I am initially interested in iOS but a similar question will arise on Android (although possible via intents rather than the url scheme).

The downside of this seems to be that the user has to install BOTH apps to get the functionality. is there a way of forcing the user to download the core app if they try to install a wrapper that uses it?

Another minor gripe might be that downloading only the core puts an icon on the phone - when really the user probably doesn't ever want to use the core directly. Is there a way to hide it?

Answer 1

Yeah you can detect if your other URL handler is registered and if it isn't, you can prompt users to download that app. No, you can not hide it.

I am not sure how Apple reviewers will feel about this though. You might want to check the TOS / Guidelines. Also, you can register all the apps under the same suite.