Is it possible to use the Apple Search API to search by genre ? I'm thinking specifically games in the app store. Using Obj-c.
As has been pointed out in the comments of this question...
Search Apple App store by genre with iOS/Obj-c
There seems to be a problem with trying to search by genre, so I'm looking for answers which of examples of that actually working, not just links to the docs.
It's not actually documented on the Search API documentation, but you can add a genreId parameter to the search URL and it restricts the search to a particular genre.
If you look at the JSON returned from a search for "Yelp", there are 4 interesting things:
"genreIds":["6005", "6001"]
"genres":["Social Networking", "Weather"]
"primaryGenreName":"Social Networking"
"primaryGenreId":6005
Adding &genreId=6001 to a URL will find apps in the US in the "Weather" category. I'm using the search term "Check" in the URL.
https://itunes.apple.com/search?term=Check&country=us&entity=software&genreId=6001
Because it's not documented, you can't rely on it working forever. You may also be able to use the primaryGenreName as a parameter, I didn't try that. You'll have to figure out what numbers correspond to what categories too.
The Search API is documented here: http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/documentation/itunes-store-web-service-search-api.html
You can use this link to generate an RSS Feed of your liking. Without knowing too much about how you intend to use it, I would suggest looking at these two solutions and using the best one that suits your needs.
