When we need to refresh an iOS7 receipt, the appropriate way to do that is to use SKReceiptRefreshRequest. This brings up an Apple dialog for the user to sign in using their Apple ID. It also allows them to Cancel. How can we detect if the user presses Cancel? (Of course, in iOS6, this can be done using catching the cancel event for [[SKPaymentQueue defaultQueue] restoreCompletedTransactions]).
The SKReceiptRefreshRequest object has a delegate with two methods:
- (void)requestDidFinish:(SKRequest *)request;
- (void)request:(SKRequest *)request didFailWithError:(NSError *)error;
In my code the requestDidFinish delegate method is called if the user does or does not press cancel.
The reason this is important to me is that I want to cancel the restore process if the user presses Cancel. If there was simply no receipt present after the refresh request, this might be relatively easy. However, sometimes there is a receipt (with some purchases) present in the app before the SKReceiptRefreshRequest, and so it stays in the app if the user cancels from the sign-in dialog.
I have two ideas for how to do this:
1) Delete the receipt from the bundle prior to the refresh request. The apparent problem with this is that the app can't remove files from the bundle (e.g., see Delete file from bundle after install). I tried. Nope.
2) Check the bytes of the receipt before the refresh request and after; if they differ, then this should indicate the user didn't press Cancel. If they don't differ, I'm not sure that does indicate they pressed Cancel. If the receipt contains purchases, I think that the bytes will differ because a refreshed receipt should have different transaction id's (but the same "original" transaction id's). If the receipt contains no purchases, I'm not sure about that.
Update, 11/9/15; I've just noticed that the delegate response to the user pressing Cancel appears to have changed. Now, didFailWithError is called. The problem of detecting user cancellation remains, however. How can we distinguish between the user pressing Cancel and a genuine error? I've been testing on iOS8.4 and iOS9.2 (beta). I have now reported this lack of distinguishability as a bug to Apple (bug #23476210).
Update, 11/10/15; This issue does not appear with iOS 9.0.2! I just tried this now with all three systems, with the same app binary, in the same approximate interval of time (within 20 minutes for all three systems): (A) iOS9.2 (13C5050d): Issue does occur (didFailWithError is called and can't distinguish between a real error and user pressing cancel), (B) iOS9.0.2, issue does not occur (requestDidFinish is called), and (C) iOS8.4.1, issue does occur. With all three system versions, this is running on real hardware, not the simulator.