I know Apple has this API I can hit:
http://itunes.apple.com/lookup?bundleId={id}
However, for the PlayStore, I'm looking for something similar, rather than parsing the app page
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id={id}
and then looking for the <div> that contains itemprop="softwareVersion"
There are a few questions about this here on SO and elsewhere on the web, but they are outdated, and make reference to unofficial APIs.
There is no Official API for grabbing the App version from the Play store.
I'd be curious exactly what you would use such an API for, if you wanted to add it in a comment. There may be a better way of achieving what you want.
Edit:
For forcing an update to your app there are other recommendations. We normally recommend that you don't have "always update to the latest version in the Play store" to developers. For example, the user might want to use your app, but be in a place where they don't have much battery or wifi. Forcing them to update in such a situation is rude, it's much better to give them a week or two until a more convenient time.
If you want to do "never have a version that is more than a couple of weeks old", can I recommend Firebase Remote Config. This would let you on the server update a configuration options for your app saying "the user should have at least this version" and change the behaviour of your app accordingly. It is much more flexible at robust than polling the Play store.
Another approach can be the Support In-app updates besides Firebase Remote config.
Google has released the Support In-app updates feature in which the apps can nudge the users to update their apps without even going to the play store. If an update is available, the users will see a dialog or a full blocking screen where the UI is generated and controlled by google play.
In-app updates works only with devices running Android 5.0 (API level 21) or higher, and requires you to use Play Core library 1.5.0 or higher. After meeting these requirements, your app can support the following UX for in-app updates!
references are here and this helpful blog. Check this out, hope it will help.
Related
I have an app on the Google Playstore and I want a way to alert my users whenever I deploy a new version of the app. I want to know how to make this possible. Does Google Playstore provide any APIs or SDKs to make this possible?
I use React-native for development, incase the answer may depend on this.
Yes, the Playstore supports this feature named In-app-updates
There is no official implementation for this here, but take a look at this.
You can use In-app updates:
In-app updates is a Google Play Core libraries feature that prompts
active users to update your app.
There are mainly two update flows.
Flexible updates
Immediate updates
Here is a detailed guide that describes how to support in-app updates in your app.
I have an android app that is a counterpart to our software product that we sell to customers.
When we sell our product to a company, I need an easy way to give those users access to the app, including updates, product description etc.
The reason that a service like Google Play will not work is, that different customers require different versions of the app depending on their version of the main software.
Some customers are unable/unwilling to stay up to date, and we need to be able to give out different versions of the app depending on their version of the software.
Is there a way to set the max version of the app that a group of users are allowed to download?
This is a really good and difficult question. As someone who has worked on app targeting for many years on Google Play I've been racking my brains for the best way to do this.
The trouble is the completely different business models. Android works on the principle "buy the app once, get upgrades forever, usually automatically". Your counterpart computer software clearly works on a slightly different principle.
I can't think of anything that works well. Sorry about that. Some possbilities which are all broken in some way:
Have a different package name for each version of your app. eg com.myapp.v1, com.myapp.v2 etc. You could have the counterpart software provide the package name in a link to be helpful.This is bad because it punishes users who do upgrade, they have to manually install the new version each time. It also means reviews and ratings wouldn't all be associated with the app. It's a pretty terrible idea.
Make the android app versions always be backwards compatible with all versions of the counterpart software. We kind of do the opposite with the Google Play servers. Because we can't guarantee users upgrade Google Play on their phones, the server has to be compatible with almost every version of Google Play (and Android Market) ever shipped. It's a lot of work, but keeps users happy. You could make sure your app always works with old counterpart versions. You could always have a "sorry, you are getting a degraded experience because you haven't upgraded.
Sorry I can't help more.
I want to know if it is possible to check if the app that the user is running is the latest version that is available at Google PlayStore. I have read some answers and they say that this is not possible, but I see some apps that do this.
Can someone tell me how can I do this? I can see that this is possible.
Indeed the Google Play Services do not expose such API.
But you could use a workaround to check for newer versions: a simple request on your serveur could do, parsing the Play Store page could do too etc.
You can create an api on your server for these kind of operations.
Your api can return values such as currentVersionCode, minVersionCode and an updateMessage.
You can compare your apps version code, currentVersionCode and minVersionCode and show a dialog for nice to update or force update.
I'm using Google Cloud messaging through google play services. The things is it only works on the devices with last version of play services installed, in remaining devices i need to show a dialog to send user to google play to install new version witch i really don't want to do!
So how can i avoid this?! I'm trying to use an older version of play services (lets say from 2 years ago) to insure majority of my users don't need to update but it seems impossible with grade and android sdk since it already deleted older versions! So what should i do? Is there any way to use older versions?! and if do find a way to use an older version are newer versions compatible with older one?
I don't want to force my users to update because
GCM it's not essential to my app although i like to have it!
It's over 30 MB witch is a lot in third world countries were my users are.
Google play blocks some of my users from accessing google play due to international lows! and i have to do update manually my self!
There is a solution for android studio:
1.Close your project
2.Browse to the folder where your projects has been saved
3.Go to folder 'app' and open the file 'build.gradle'
find this line :
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services:7.3.0'
and change the version (here 7.3.0) to an older one (like 6.5.87).
You can find out available versions by looking at sdk/extras/google/m2repository/com/google/android/gms/play-services
5.open the project again
Unfortunately Google Cloud Messaging was only added to the Play Services API in version 7.5, which was released end of May 2015 (see this Android Developers Blog post).
So, if you manage to find a copy of the v7.5 API (see my question regarding that here) or if the suggestion above by #Babak is safe (still investigating that one... and you can only go down to 7.5.0 before you lose GCM support), you might be able to gain a few months, but it will likely not make a huge difference...
Actually, I just noticed that your question was also posted end of May... So you probably won't be able to gain anything. But you may reduce support of you move to a new API version later!
My application will have a low cost for a basic version.
If the user need more features, heneed to buy plug-in.
Question is:
What is the best solution for this approach?
Better the use of in-app billing or publish packet that contain the plug-in as normal apps with a price ?
Thank you
In-app billing is the recommended means for providing extra features. There's very little to worry about with it, as it's all taken care of through google play functionality. Otherwise you're requiring your users to download a whole new apk file as a paid for thing.
This page on the Android Developer site gives a good set of instructions on how to achieve this.