Is an internal script / programming language allowed on the iPhone App Store?

Question

I heard some conflicting things about the acceptability of scripting languages ​​(like Lua) in apps for the App Store. I would like to hear from anyone who understands the policy regarding applications that contain a certain level of programmability, or those who have had experience submitting such an application for approval.

For example, suppose I want to create some kind of statistical package. It can provide the user with an application-specific language for code scripts that will manipulate data by invoking built-in statistical functions.

If this scripting tool does not have access to any objects outside the application sandbox, can this be an obstacle to accepting the App Store?

Answer 1

Yes.

Using Javascript code running inside a UIWebView is an explicitly permitted scripting methodology. See PhoneGap for one use case.

Other scripting languages ​​may be acceptable if they do not run downloaded code or compile executable code (even JIT). This is the standard methodology for many 3D game engines. (The Apple SDK agreement was amended to allow this around September 2010.)

Comments added:

Other examples. Currently, the iOS App Store has at least 5 major translators and several programmable calculators. Possibly interpreters for Scheme, Ruby and Python.

Unknown If you developed an interpreter in Javascript for a statistical language, could this Javascript in UIWebView load and interpret the source code in that particular statistical language?

Answer 2

If this scripting tool does not have access to any objects that are outside the application sandbox [.,.]

Yes , that should be good. Recent App Store guides explicitly allow interpreted code, provided that it is not updated remotely.