Moltin for iOS — eCommerce for native iOS apps

@ajsturrock would love to know what inspired you and the team to build this? What was the development process like?

Hey @bentossell Since conceiving our idea we’ve always wanted to deliver eCommerce to every platform. We’ve been working on our API for over 2 years and already had the backend in place when we started to look into iOS support. It was simply the case of creating a native SDK to support iOS apps - with both Swift and Objective-C support. Apple’s commitment to eCommerce is more apparent now than ever - for example they recently added a Shopping category to the App Store dedicated to eCommerce apps - so it’s certainly a soaring area of mobile at the moment. iOS developers we have spoken with were frustrated that no solution existed that fully catered to their eCommerce needs. They needed to hook up several different systems and build out their own logic directly within their apps. Not only was this time consuming but could also pose security risks if they didn’t build their own backend server to handle things securely. Additionally, many smaller mobile dev teams do not have the ability to write an entire backend themselves, so Moltin helps smaller teams develop their eCommerce apps quicker and without the need for backend development and deployment knowledge. Not to mention we were constantly asked by users every day if we could create an SDK for their iOS applications that would allow them to pull in products, manipulate carts and take payments in one package. Earlier this month we began working with @djmckee to produce a powerful SDK that unlocked this functionality and gave them what they were looking for.

Hey @bentossell, I worked with @moltin to create the iOS SDK - we've tried to make it super simple to integrate, and provided both Objective-C and Swift getting started tutorials & example apps (we've also integrated Apple Pay in to the Obj-C example app via Stripe too). Having a native SDK makes it super simple for iOS devs to integrate a store into their apps, and not having to write a backend is a huge advantage too! Existing SDKs helped us to develop rapidly and in a way that makes sense to iOS devs 😄

@djmckee @ajsturrock awesome :) thanks for taking the time!

@ajsturrock Stripe has been very active in the space of late, both founders have been laying out their vision for the future of mobile commerce with Stripe as a major component. Their product is still under wraps, but from what you're hearing/know so far, how will the product compete with yours? How does this competitive landscape evolve over time?

Thanks for the feedback @joe_blau - hope you enjoy using it and it saves you time, there's some fairly thorough example apps (and some more brief getting started guides), but if you do have any issues then please get in touch!

@djmckee @joe_blau I had a quick question about product images. Where is the best recommend place to store those?

Hey @joe_blau, we recommend you store them in the Moltin Forge dashboard, uploading an image for each product, and then to get them from the iOS SDK you should be able to retrieve the images as an array by looking at the 'images' key of the product dictionary, and then using the 'url.https' key path to get the HTTPS image URL for display - we have example apps in Swift (https://github.com/moltin/ios-sw...) and Obj-C (https://github.com/moltin/ios-ob...) that demo how to handle product images :)