App Store via Curl Stopped Working

Question

I have a script that periodically downloads different App Store pages so I can easily keep an eye on my app ratings.

It has worked perfectly with a few minor changes over the last couple of years. All of the sudden a couple hours ago my curl call just returns a 0 byte response. I assume Apple just made some changes.

Anyone know how to get it working again? It is a major setback for me not to be able to keep an eye on my app ratings. I would be willing to bet they changed the value for the X-Apple-Store-Front but I don't have any idea how to figure out what they might have changed it to.

Here is what I was using before to get the top-200 selling iPad Photography apps:

curl -H "X-Apple-Store-Front: 143441-1,5" "http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewTop?genreId=6008&id=25236&popId=47"

Answer 1

I have faced this same problem while i was working in my application using itunes url through curl. I had this same curl problem and it returns 0 bytes. Everything was working fine in my server except this curl issue. Later i found the solution that apple has changed the urls from http to https in their api calls (for some time). I have fixed the problem by myself just simply changing the urls http://itunes.apple.com to https://itunes.apple.com. So changing the urls might help your problem.

I have used itunes api look up calls (http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/documentation/itunes-store-web-service-search-api.html#lookup)

Answer 2

Using curl against the store can be messy and prone to iTunes changing layout or link structure.

iTunes already offers tools for developers to get the info they need via RSS feeds or JSON formatted results. Try looking over some of the documentation for these tools here:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/documentation/itunes-store-web-service-search-api.html

The RSS feed tool can be found here:
http://itunes.apple.com/rss