Licensing a Marketplace Product

Tell the marketplace how to ask your own server whether an installation holds your product.

Overview

WISECP publishes no licence protocol for the products you sell. You choose the address, what travels with the question, and what a yes looks like.

Entitlement is not the panel's to assert, so it asks you, about one thing: the domain of the installation that is downloading.

Declaring a check is optional. A paid listing without one publishes, and its download stays open at the same bar as a free product.

Prerequisites

Structure

Turn on Declare a licence check, then pick which kind. The two are not interchangeable settings; they are two different integrations, and each asks for its own fields.

The panel asks at two moments, never on a page view: a buyer starting a download, and a customer beginning a review. A positive answer is remembered for ten minutes.

Walkthrough

Wire the WISECP mode

1. Open your software product in your own panel and go to its Licensing tab. The check address is shown there, ready to copy: https://your-site.example/license/checking/{token}/{product-id}.
2. Paste it into Check address. Nothing else is asked: the request and the answer are both known.
3. The panel calls it with the buyer's domain. Your installation answers with the plain word OK, or with the newer signed envelope. Both are read as a yes.

Wire a custom endpoint

1. Enter the address and choose POST or GET.
2. Name the field the domain travels in. Leave it empty and domain is used.
3. Add any constant fields your endpoint needs, one name: value per line, and the same for request headers.
4. Describe a yes. Give the status you expect, the body type, the path into it, and the value that means licensed.

Test it

1. Enter a domain that really holds a licence on your server.
2. Click Test connection. The call is made from the panel, not your browser, so your credentials never travel to the page.
3. A pass stamps the declaration and completes the section. Editing any part of the declaration drops that stamp, so test again after a change.

Check the licence inside your product

The declaration above is the download gate. It says nothing about the copy already installed, so the product enforces itself.

1. Ask your own server from inside your code. License::remote_check() sends the question and remembers the answer for a day, so a licensed product does not phone home on every page view.
2. Read the verdict yourself. It does not judge the answer or verify a signature; null means the server could not be reached, not that the copy is unlicensed.
3. Put the decision in a file you marked for encryption, so the line cannot be deleted. Marking and packaging: Licensing a Module.

Reference

The fields of a custom declaration.

What a failed check reports back to you.

Example

A JSON endpoint that answers 200 with a nested verdict.

{"data": {"valid": true, "expires_at": "2027-06-01"}}

Address        = https://vendor.example/api/licence
Method         = POST
Domain field   = domain
Extra fields   = product: sample-pro
Headers        = Authorization: Bearer <your token>
Expected status = 200
Body type      = JSON
Path           = data.valid
Expected value = true

The same server can answer in plain text instead. Then the body type is text, the path stays empty, and the expected value is the word itself, such as OK.

Inside the product, the same question is asked with the carrier. The answer is the raw response, so your code decides what it means.

$answer = \License::remote_check('https://vendor.example/api/licence', [
    'product' => 'sample-pro',
    'domain'  => \Utility::getDomain(),
]);

// Unreachable is not a refusal: do not lock a customer out over your own downtime.
if ($answer === null) return true;

$body = \Utility::jdecode((string) ($answer['body'] ?? ''), true);

return (int) ($answer['status'] ?? 0) === 200 && ($body['data']['valid'] ?? false) === true;

Pitfalls

Related Articles

• Publishing a Product
• Shipping a Release
• Licensing a Module