mobile: prompt for app review

[Colin Holgate]

This should be easy, but there's a complication. I'm assuming you know how to show a button to the user, inviting them to write a review, and what you're asking is how do you take the user to your review page? If that's right, the normal url would be this:

itms-apps://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewContentsUserReviews?type=Purple+Software&id=465317539

That link would directly take the user to your app's review page, inside the App Store app (if that ID is your One Minute Reader, and not someone else's One Minute Reader). The button script should be this:

on mouseUp
   launch url "itms-apps://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewContentsUserReviews?type=Purple+Software&id=465317539"
end mouseUp

Unfortunately, LiveCode insists on the URL starting with http, file, or tel, and it won't attempt to send the URL to iOS. For desktop apps that's easily worked around by making the script be this:

on mouseUp
   launch url "http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewContentsUserReviews?type=Purple+Software&id=465317539"
end mouseUp

That will open Safari, which then opens iTunes, on the review page of your app. Unfortunately, part 2, that URL doesn't work on iOS. iOS seems to not like any iTunes.apple.com addresses.

So, either RunRev should let URLs through even if they start with itms-apps, or you may need a tiny external that can take over the job that launch url normally does.