About app-store-reviews

Node.js module to download user reviews from the iTunes Store and the Mac App Store.

It supports:

• All countries
• All apps on the iTunes Store
• All apps on the Mac App Store

This module uses the public feed to customer reviews

https://itunes.apple.com/rss/customerreviews/page=1/id=555731861/sortby=mostrecent/xml?l=en&cc=us

Installation

app-store-reviews is available via the npm packet manager.

$ npm install app-store-reviews

Usage

You can find all the following examples in the examples folder.

Example 1: single app and country

In this example we simply print the reviews of Tunes Notifier to the console from the US Store. The ID of the app is 555731861.

Code

var appStoreReviewsModule = require('app-store-reviews');
var appStoreReviews = new appStoreReviewsModule();

appStoreReviews.on('review', function(review) {
	console.log(review);
});

appStoreReviews.getReviews('555731861', 'us', 1);

Output

[ id: '676984080',
  app: '555731861',
  author: 'appwatching',
  version: '1.1',
  rate: '5',
  title: 'Very good',
  comment: 'Mucho mejor ahora. Ya se puede esconder el icono de la barra de menús.',
  vote: '0',
  updated: '2012-10-19T12:48:41-07:00',
  country: 'us' ]

Example 2: import to a database for all countries

In this example we store the reviews in a MySQL database.

You can find the structure of the database in examples/reviews-to-mysql.sql

Code

var appStoreReviewsModule = require('app-store-reviews');
var appStoreReviews = new appStoreReviewsModule();

var mysql = require('mysql');

function mysqlConnection()
{
	var db = mysql.createConnection ({
		user : 'root',
	    password : 'root',
	    host : "localhost",
	    database : "reviews",
	    port : "3306"
	});

	return db;
}

function insertReviewInDb(id, app, author, version, rate, title, comment, country, updated)
{
	var review = {
		id: id,
		app: app,
		author: author,
		version: version,
		rate: rate,
		title: title,
		comment: comment,
		country: country,
		review_date: updated,
	}

	var db = mysqlConnection();
	db.connect();
	db.query('INSERT IGNORE INTO reviews SET ?', review);
	db.end();
}

appStoreReviews.on('review', function(review) {
	insertReviewInDb(review['id'], review['app'], review['author'], review['version'], review['rate'], review['title'], review['comment'], review['country'], review['updated']);
});

appStoreReviews.on('nextPage', function(nextPage) {
	appStoreReviews.getReviews(nextPage['appId'], nextPage['country'], nextPage['nextPage']);
});


console.log("Starting reviews-to-mysql.js at " + Date());
var db = mysqlConnection();
db.connect();
db.query('SELECT * FROM apps WHERE enabled=1', function(err, rows, fields) {
	if (err) {
		console.log("DB error: " + err);
	} else {
		for (var index in rows) {
			console.log("App: " + rows[index].id + " - " + rows[index].name);
			
			var countries;
			if (rows[index].countries == null || rows[index].countries == "") {
				countries = appStoreReviews.allCountries();
			} else {
				countries = rows[index].countries.split(',');
				console.log(countries);
			}
			
			for (var countryIndex in countries) {
				appStoreReviews.getReviews(rows[index].id, countries[countryIndex], 1);
			}
		}
	}
});
db.end();

Example 3: automatically email new reviews

In this example we store the reviews in a MySQL database and send the new reviews by email periodically using Cron.

You can find the structure of the database in examples/reviews-to-mysql.sql.

• In a directory, copy the following files

• examples/reviews-to-mysql.js

• examples/mysql-to-email.js

• examples/reviews-to-email.sh

• Install the required Node.js modules

$ npm install app-store-reviews
$ npm install mysql
$ npm install nodemailer

• In reviews-to-mysql.js, configure your database connection details.

• In mysql-to-email.js, configure your database connection details and email address and password.

• In reviews-to-email.sh, set the path to the directory containing this file.

• Make reviews-to-email.sh executable: chmod +x reviews-to-email.sh

• Add reviews-to-email.sh to Cron

• Edit the current crontab: $ crontab -e

• Add the following line (run every day at 12): 0 12 * * * /EXAMPLE/PATH/reviews-to-email.sh