If you ever wanted to post a direct link that opens to an App Store category on iTunes, you’ve probably ran into a bit of trouble. If you right click and copy the link from an app’s category, you’d probably end up somewhere like: https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/ios-games/id6014?mt=8
No problem when you try opening it from a iOS device, but if you open that link on a computer browser, you’ll most definitely be disappointed.
You can change https:// to itmss:// and if the protocol is registered, it’ll open up on iTunes. But Facebook and Twitter don’t really treat itmss links correctly. Facebook redirects to http:// and Twitter doesn’t even linkify it.
I have gone on a quest to find the regular http links that’ll open App Store categories and I have found the following. Basically what you’ll need is the MZStore.woa API which calls viewGrouping and figure out what the group id is.
- App Store
- Business
- Education
- Entertainment
- Finance
- Games
- Health & Fitness
- Lifestyle
- Music
- Navigation
- News
- Photo & Video
- Productivity
- Reference
- Social Networking
- Sports
- Travel
- Utilities
- Weather
Unfortunately I didn’t look far enough to figure out some of the newer categories: Books, Catalogs, Food & Drink, Medical, Newsstands
So if you know the direct links to the newer categories, feel free to post it in the comments below and I’ll update my post.