About the usage of "Can payments be made?"

MMF help states: It is advisable to use "Can payments be made?" in any event where you want to query the store for information or request for payments.

Instead of using this condition along with any Appstore request, can we put all Appstore events in a group and continuously check if payments can be made or not? This would allow to enable the Appstore group or show an error message, depending on the current state. Seems to be more elegant and effective to me, does anything speak against it?

Apple does not really give any information about how efficient the test if purchases are available is. I would myself only do it at the start of the frame and before any purchases.
You can do the grouping just fine, but I would maybe only do it once a second maybe (and when the user wants to do anything related to the store)

Thanks for the advice! Just want to be sure about these details, should also be interesting for others who want to use in-app-purchase:

I'll check for connection problems only in intervalls (to show error message/disable buy buttons).

I'll check for "Can Payments be made"
- on start of frame (enabling buy buttons and product info requests)
- in intervalls after a disconnection was detected (to allow Appstore requests again, covering special cases where connection was interrupted, WLAN was just started and took some time to initialize etc.)
- when requesting payment, product info or using restore transactions
but NOT in addition to events like "On any item event", "On specific item event" or "Restore payment finished/failed"

Did I get this right?

Yes that seems correct :)
The events "On any item event" and similar wouldn't even fire if the device didn't have internet connection (with exception of the failure events).
In either way, the triggered events doesn't need the 'Can payments be made' condition. It should only be used before attempting to access the store.

Ok, thanks for checking this!

Does an app get rejected if it shows purchases whilst offline?

I don't know but I wouldn't think so. You should at least notify the user that purchases cannot be made at the current time in some way. Maybe grey out the purchase buttons and display a notification icon and string at the bottom of the screen?

I made a separate screen for the Appstore stuff. It shows a "Loading data from Appstore" message by default and the buy button only appears after a successful "On Request Response" along with the item description and price. Hope that's ok for approval.

I'm having a problem with "Can Payments Be Made." I have an event like this:

Can Payments Be Made?-----> Make purchase button visible

Very simple. But even when I set my phone to Airplane mode the purchase button is visible. I'm using this because if I don't, when I do a "request information" while in airplane mode (to simulate no internet connection) the app crashes (iPhone4). So I don't even want to be able to get to the Purchase screen if there's no internet.

Anyone have any ideas on what I might be doing wrong?

Can't check my code right now to see how I cover connection problems. I'm wondering if we interpret this condition correctly, look at these docs. Are we wrong, is it only about the general setting (IAPs can be deactivated) but not about connection issues?

I wish I could get this working. It's literally the only thing holding up my sending the game off to Apple.

You can use the Get object to test the connection. It might not be optimal, but it works. Just call a URL and show the icon only if the page is returned and payments can be made.

You would probably also need to test if payments cannot be made. Try the following:

• Can Payments Be Made?
• Only one action when event loops
--> Make purchase button visible
--> Request product info

• [X negated] Can Payments Be Made?
• Only one action when event loops
--> Make purchase button invisible

Thanks Popcorn, that's an interesting work-around.

Olivier, the problem is that the "Can payments be made" event seems to always return "yes," even when I'm in Airplane mode. I can't figure out why.

Fwtep, airplane mode doesn't mean that the device cannot go online. Wifi still works while in airplane mode. I've been surfing the web onboard a plane that offers wifi, and the phone was set to Airplane mode.

I just checked. I put my phone in Airplane mode and it turns WiFi off.

Yes, you can turn on WiFi when in Airplane mode, but I'm using Airplane mode as a way to check what happens when trying to use the store with no Internet connection. So far I can't get "Can payments be made" to do anything, and if a user goes to the store while there's no Internet the game crashes.

OK, going through several other threads I think I have it figured out. "Can payments" is for determining if the device is set to allow IAPs, it has nothing to do with a network connection. So I'm using Get.mfx to test for a connection by trying to reach my web site. If it connects, and if "Can payments" allows it, it goes to my purchase page. If Get allows it but "Can payments" doesn't, it pops up a "you must enable IAPs" thing.

EDIT: So here's what I did: Set the default to assume no internet connection but send out a Get (Get.mfx). So when you click on the purchase button and it pops up with "No Internet Connection" unless the Get comes back with "on get complete" in which case it goes to my "Can payments be made" events, and pending the out comes of those, either allows the purchase, or pops up a "Please enable In-App Purchase" thing.

It seems that using "Can Payments be made?" isn't doing what you describe for me. I have an event that opens a menu when you press a button with the "can payments be made?" condition. If you turn off wifi and sign out of your itunes account ID, the button still works. It simply asks you if you want to make a purchase. Then if you aren't signed into your itunes account, it brings up a second dialogue for signing in. Is it possible this condition is only used by older iOS versions? I am on v6.0.1 on an ipod touch.

Or when you say "IAP is enabled" you mean that it has been set up in tunes connect?

In the general settings of a device you can disable IAPs. "Can payments be made" only tells you if the user is allowed to make IAPs, that's how I think it works.

The MMF docs say that it also checks for internet+AppStore connection, but I guess that's wrong.

CT, can you please update the docs? This option has caused so much confusion.

Hi everybody
As far as I remember, back when I created the object, the 'Can Payments Be Made' actually did check for an internet connection. I don't know when or why they changed it. I could be wrong though.