Embedded Web Store SDK

FastSpring’s Embedded Store SDKs (Software Development Kits) provide lightweight frameworks for embedding the functionality of your web store right into Mac or Windows desktop applications, enabling in-app purchasing by your customers. The SDKs include functionality to capture post purchase delivery information, such as licenses, enabling the application to automatically activate itself after successful purchase. Each SDK contains full source code, test applications, examples, and documentation. This article focuses on steps to integrate your embedded store into SpringBoard.

FastSpring’s Readme files for each SDK, accessible at the Github URLs below, contain extensive implementation overviews. We encourage you to read that documentation first, if you have not done so yet. You can then return to this article to learn how to enable your store for FsprgEmbeddedStore requests.

Step 1: Get the SDK

MacOS: Use our CocoaPod or Clone/Fork our Github repository. Learn more here.

Windows (C# .NET): Clone or Download our Github repository.

Windows (C++ MFC): Clone or Download our Github repository.

Step 2: Store Setup

By default, your FastSpring store is not configured to recognize the embedded store.

To enable requests from the embedded web store SDK, go to SpringBoard's Store Home » Store Settings » Advanced tab. For the greatest integration opportunities choose Property List XML Format (.plist), which allows the SDK to capture post purchase information such as licenses. After changing this option, click Save.

Step 3: Style Setup

It is important to use a different style for your embedded web store, since it will be running within an application window instead of a web browser. The following steps add a plain style (that may be customized later), which is automatically activated when accessed from the embedded store.

Go to SpringBoard's Store Home » Styles. Click Create a Style. Upload the default plain style from the SDK you downloaded in step 1 and create the style. (Note: The entire contents of the FsprgEmbeddedStoreStyle directory needs to be zipped up, and uploaded as the style.)

You can click View to see the style. If desired, make changes to the style.css file within the default SDK style, rezip, and upload again.
Click Edit Conditions and select to add an Order Environment Condition to the style.
Click the FS Embedded checkbox and click Create.
Move the new Style to Active Status.

Note: Since this style has been given an Order Environment Condition, it will not effect your live web-based store.

Testing

Once you have performed the required setup steps described above, there are two methods for testing the embedded store functionality, even before your application has been integrated with the SDK.

Go to SpringBoard's Store Home » Store Testing. Click the Optional Parameters tab. Click on the checkbox labeled Simulate Embedded. Click the Testing Links tab and choose a product to test. This will cause the store opened in your web browser to behave as though it had been activated from the embedded store.
Use the special testing application in the SDK named TestApp.

License Integration

One of the most useful aspects of integrating with the SDK is the ability to automatically activate your application after a successful purchase. All license techniques supported by FastSpring are also supported by the SDK. Each SDK provides an API to access the generated license information after the sale. It is then the responsibility of your application code to capture this license information using the SDK's API, performing the necessary steps to activate your application. As a next step we recommend looking at the example applications provided in each SDK.

Creating a Separate FastSpring Embedded Store

It is possible to set up a completely separate store to isolate your embedded store from your normal web-based store. Although this is a more advanced setup, which requires duplication of your product setup, it may be desired in some cases. Please contact us by opening a support ticket if you would like a separate store added to your account for embedded purchases.

Results in FastSpring Classic Documentation:

Important!