Determining If User Installed An App (air / As3)

Ok, so I'm working on a mobile game using AIR and AS3. The idea here is that I want to provide an incentive for installing another game. In other words: user taps button in game A

Solution 1:

There are a couple ways to answer this: Custom URL Scheme: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/iphone/conceptual/iphoneosprogrammingguide/AdvancedAppTricks/AdvancedAppTricks.html ( the Communicating with Other Apps section)

This requires that the app you are attempting to up-sell does in fact implement a custom URL scheme, but it is a simple thing to implement. Once you have the URL Scheme, you can make a method that checks: canOpenURL: Returns whether an app can open a given URL resource.

• (BOOL)canOpenURL:(NSURL *)url (in UIApplication)

If you want more significant data exchange (shared login, or some such) you could use the Keychain facility: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/security/conceptual/keychainServConcepts/iPhoneTasks/iPhoneTasks.html

Solution 2:

You can do this with java by quering the PackageManager class. In Java, that would look something like this:

isAppInstalled("your.package.name.here");

private boolean isAppInstalled(String packageName) {
    PackageManager pm = getPackageManager();
    boolean installed = false;
    try {
       pm.getPackageInfo(packageName, PackageManager.GET_ACTIVITIES);
       installed = true;
    } catch (PackageManager.NameNotFoundException e) {
       installed = false;
    }
    return installed;
}

Since you are using AS3, you should have to build a native extension to access the PackageManager. Luckly, internet is great and someone else has done this already. you can check out this extension. Its 5 bucks, but totaly worth it. I used it to do a very similar logic.

Also, if app B is your own, you can add a new file in a SD card directory and check the existence of this file with app A.

Good luck :D