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Amazon In-App Purchasing

About

Amazon In-App Purchasing (IAP) API allows your app to present, process, and fulfill purchases of digital content and subscriptions within your Android app through the Amazon Appstore.

Amazon runs the purchase workflow, starting when the customer decides to purchase an item and ending when Amazon provides the app either a receipt for the purchase or a status code, in the case of a failed purchase. You do not need to provide purchase dialogs, transaction timeout logic, or "Thank You" dialogs. The Amazon Appstore provides all of these pieces of a transaction.

This section describes how to setup your AIR application to use Amazon In-App Purchasing with this extension.

Install​

The simplest way to install and manage your AIR native extensions and libraries is to use the AIR Package Manager (apm). We highly recommend using apm, as it will handle downloading all required dependencies and manage your application descriptor (Android manifest additions, iOS info additions etc).

However you can choose to install it manually, as you would have done in the past.

info

Note: All of the commands below should be run in a terminal / command prompt in the root directory of your application, generally the level above your source directory.

If you don't have an APM project setup, expand the guide below to setup an APM project before installing the extension.

Setup APM

Install APM​

If you haven't installed apm follow the install guide on airsdk.dev.

Setup an APM project​

You will need an APM project for your application.

There are many ways to do this and for more options see the APM documentation. Here we will just initialise a new empty project:

apm init

Check your github token​

We use github to secure our extensions so you must have created a github personal access token and configured apm to use it.

To do this create a token using this guide from github and then set it in your apm config using:

apm config set github_token ghp_XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

If you don't do this correctly you may find the install will fail.

Install the extension​

Install the extension by running: 

apm install com.distriqt.InAppBilling-Amazon

Once complete apm will have created something like the following file structure: 

.
|____ ane
| |____ com.distriqt.InAppBilling.Amazon.ane    # InAppBilling extension
| |____ [dependencies]
|____ apm_packages                              # cache directory - ignore
|____ project.apm                               # apm project file
  • Add the ane directory to your IDE. See the tutorials located here on adding an extension to your IDE.
info

We suggest you use the locations directly in your builds rather than copying the files elsewhere. The reason for this is if you ever go to update the extensions using apm that these updates will be pulled into your build automatically.

caution

Only install one variant of an package. The base variant is installed when no variant is specified and cannot be included alongside another variant. You will likely get an error if you attempt to install multiple variants with apm

Application Descriptor​

Updating your application descriptor will insert the required extensionID's and generate the manifest and info additions for your application.

You update your application descriptor by running:

apm generate app-descriptor src/MyApp-app.xml

Change the path (src/MyApp-app.xml) to point to your application descriptor.

caution

This will modify your application descriptor replacing the manifest additions and info additions with the ones generated from apm.

You should backup your application descriptor before running this command to ensure you don't lose any information.

If you need to insert custom data into these sections see the guides for Android and iOS

Appstore Authentication Key​

To add the PEM file to your application:

  • Log into the Developer Console with your developer account.
  • Go to Apps & Services > My Apps. Then click your app.
  • Go to the App Information tab.
  • Click Public Key in the upper-right area.
  • In the Public Key dialog box that appears, click the AppstoreAuthenticationKey.pem link to download the PEM file. This file contains your public key.
note

The link to the public key appears only when you create a new version or when you create a new app. If you had a new version in progress prior to the release of the Appstore SDK, you must complete your existing version and then create a new version — then the public key link will appear. Alternatively, for this tutorial you can just create a new Android app.

  • Copy the AppstoreAuthenticationKey.pem file to the root folder of your project and ensure it is packaged with your amazon application.

Checking for Support​

You can use the isSupported flag to determine if this extension is supported on the current platform and device.

This allows you to react to whether the functionality is available on the device and provide an alternative solution if not.

if (InAppBilling.isSupported)
{
    // Functionality here
}
note

This only checks if there is some functionality supported, not whether a particular billing service is available.