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I'm about to start expanding my secondhand app, where people can put their used university books for sale.

Right now the app is only available in one country, but in the near future other scandinavian countries will follow.

As an example I want to expand to Sweden, the user should only be able to see/buy/sell books that are for sale in that country.

I have come up with 2 solutions, but none of them are quite good:

  • Location decides country.
  • User selects the country from a list.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this, since lots of apps do this - but I can't figure out how.

rmaddy
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JMIT
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  • What about the country from the user's locale? – rmaddy Dec 20 '15 at 16:08
  • This is only how they have setup their iPhone. The things that there are a lot of exchange students whom has their iPhone on their native language. – JMIT Dec 20 '15 at 16:28

3 Answers3

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Why not a combination of both? Try the location services first, if for whatever reason they have location services turned off or don't allow it, have them select their country. The country selection should be one of the first prompts they are given when they open the app (if location services aren't on). Otherwise, before they are allowed to post any books for sale. In other words they shouldn't be allowed to put a book up for sales without the app knowing which country they are in.

Are you using swift (what version) or objective-c?

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/CoreLocation/Reference/CLLocationManager_Class/

You'll need a list of countries: How do I get a list of countries in Swift ios?

Community
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ItsPronounced
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  • I'm using objective-c.. Sounds like a good plan to begin with. My biggest concern is, that by asking for the users location i'll might loose some users. – JMIT Dec 20 '15 at 16:26
  • Try to be friendly about the request: "Hey! We really need to know what country you are in so we can provide you the best possible experience!" Then request location services or ask them to select the country. It's all about user experience! – ItsPronounced Dec 20 '15 at 16:37
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If you are willing to pay some. You could look at a ip based Solution like the www.maxmind.com api. It Gives country info and more. And we bought 50.000 queries for 50 dollars. And as we check once per user, we did not even finísh our bought queries!

Spons
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    By the way, if the intent here is to get the users location without asking for permission, be aware that this runs afoul of the [App Store Guidelines](https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#location) which say "Apps that do not notify and obtain user consent before collecting, transmitting, or using location data will be rejected." – Rob Dec 20 '15 at 16:43
  • Also keep in mind nowadays, that if you are extending to europe, depending on what you do GDPR needs to be counted for, it's not only app store guidelines anymore :) – Spons Jul 04 '19 at 09:45
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I believe your application should do a guesswork and provide easy-to-use alternative for the case when the guess was incorrect. Get the country by location or IP. When the user installs the app, show the selected country and make sure your user can easily change it both in the installer and in the app itself (if, for instance, one student moves from a country to the other).

Lajos Arpad
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