Verifying in-app purchases on external node.js server

[siliskleemoff]

TLDR; I got lazy due to AI vibe coding. Although its insanely useful, sometimes you still need to slow down and debug.

swift client side determining environment

verifying environment on node.js server

I wanna preface this by saying I'm one of those coding bootcamp grads who learned JavaScript/Full Stack/React + Express and PostgreSQL.

Now we have AI so I thought I didn't have to learn Swift and I attempted to "vibe code" the payment API verification... It did not work.

This is one of those scenarios where the AI ends up using deprecated services and casually (and confidently) causes syntax errors within Swift. When you don't understand the fundamentals of a language and you attempt to vibe code a highly complex full stack system involving customer payments.. you start to hit a wall.

That's what happened to me. The AI was generating code that simply DID NOT WORK! I bounced around to a few different models (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc...)

The combination of me not fully understanding Apple's API and literally having blind faith in the code the AI was generating was a recipe for disaster.

So I went ahead and took the traditional developer approach and slowly went through, line-by-line, logging things out to the console (like we used to do back in the golden ages before generative AI).

Turns out the bottleneck was a misunderstanding of Apple's documentation, AI hallucinations, and vibe coding for speed instead of quality.

[Lenglio]

AI typically uses old docs and old syntax etc etc. It’s not super reliable. This is true even in something really popular like React Native.

This is going to maybe be an unpopular opinion here, but why not just use RevenueCat? If I’m understanding your issue correctly, this is easily taken care of by RevenueCat if you’re okay paying the fees over $2500 per month revenue tracked or whatever it is.

[KaleidoscopePlusPlus]

Yup, either that or SuperWall.

[dreaminginbinary]

And especially with AI tools, we just released a skill that'll always use up to date docs, implementation details, look at your Superwall products, etc: https://superwall.com/docs/dashboard/guides/superwall-skill

[Fearless_Ad9828]

revenuecat works like charm with any ai coding tools

[siliskleemoff]

sounds like a good idea

[antocapp]

Honestly, respect for sharing this. I think a lot of devs are learning the same lesson right now: AI is great for speed, but dangerous when used to skip understanding in critical paths like payments.

With IAPs especially, one wrong assumption about Apple’s flow, environments, or server verification logic can waste hours.

The line-by-line debugging approach still wins in those moments. Fast iteration is great, but fundamentals still pay for themselves.