First rejection

So I know I haven’t been posting here much, what can I say?

But I did feel like posting that I have had my first ever rejection experience with the Apple App Store.

An app I have been building for a client got rejected for collecting donations for charity — even though the app did not collect actual money, it merely allowed you to convert points earned in the app to a charitable donation.

The reviewer was very nice about it and offered some suggestions on how to comply with the rules in this area.

Here is where this post turns into a love letter to PhoneGap/Cordova and KendoUI.

The easiest way to comply was to have the actual charitable donation aspect happen on a web site and have the app kick the user out of the app to said web site to complete the donation. If the app had been native I would have had to re-write all my logic and create a web site appropriate for a mobile device, etc. However, since the app was a hybrid app using PhoneGap and KendoUI, all I had to do was copy some of the app into a standalone website using the same UI and the same JavaScript logic. Then I added a button from the website sending the user back to the app using URI schemes in iOS (the Android version of the app can stay how it was).

Like magic, I now have the charitable donations happening on a web site instead of the app, but with very little effort and it even looks the same aesthetically as the app!

The app has been resubmitted and our fingers are once again crossed.

As for the other problem (a lack of decent posts on this blog) I have been storing some up that I did not want to post until this app was finished. They should be coming very soon. I hope. Heh.