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Normally, the unlock attribute indicates the exact URL of the content that is unlocked when the link is paid by the Internet user. The appendable attribute modifies the way the unlock command is interpreted.
When we use appendable="true" all the URLs, files and folders that start are unlocked, as indicated in the unlock attribute. See the example below:
The following paid-link:
<a unlock="http://www.example.com/test" appendable="true" price="0.01USD" duration="20" href="#">Unlocks URLs such as the following:
http://www.example.com/test.html http://www.example.com/test.gif http://www.example.com/testing.gif http://www.example.com/test/ http://www.example.com/test/index.html http://www.example.com/testing/index.html
If you want to unlock only one folder and its content, simply enter a slash / at the end of unlock. For example:
The following paid-link:
<a unlock="http://www.example.com/test/" appendable="true" price="0.01USD" duration="20" href="#">Unlocks URLs such as the following:
http://www.example.com/test/ http://www.example.com/test/index.html http://www.example.com/test/photos/pic1.jpg
A micropayment is a low-value payment for the acquisition of a unitary content.
A micro-subscription is a low-value payment for the acquisition of a content package, i.e. "many contents".
The difference between the two is somehow subjective, since it depends on what you define as unitary content. For example, is a photo page a unitary content (one page) or is it a content package (many photos)?
The appendable attribute may or may not be used in micro-payments, but it is absolutely necessary when creating micro-subscriptions. This is because, as we have seen previously, a micro-subscription unlocks a whole package of contents, naturally composed of many URLs. To unlock many URLs at once, you must use the appendable attribute.
Creating micro-subscriptions is an easy process, as long as the files and folders that constitute your website are organized as required. If your website contains many different sections, for example, and you want to sell different micro-subscriptions for each one of them, then your strategy should be to place every section in a separate folder, and create paid-links that unlock each one of these folders with all their contents, as required.
But there are, of course, many other ways of organizing information to be sold using micro-subscriptions. For instance, if you want to sell access to just a few photos in a folder, you can group these photos, name these groups and unlock only the named groups. Hence, if you unlock photoA by means of appendable="true", then you will be unlocking photoA1.jpg and photoA2.jpg, but will not be unlocking photoB1.jpg or photoB2.jpg.
Clearly, the appendable attribute only works with the unlock attribute. But remember that, when the unlock attribute is omitted, iCents.net may sometimes use unlock automatically, similarly to the paid-link href event. Please refer to unlock attribute for further details.
At the least, to avoid errors, we suggest not to omit unlock when you are using appendable.