I recently came across this app Purchase Apps, which is somehow able to retrieve apps I've paid for in google play after I signed in using my google account.
I'm trying to find out how it is being done as I want to build a similar app, but for the free apps which were downloaded.
However, I can't find which OAuth API Scope was used for retrieving that information, even after going through the entire list of APIs.
EDIT:
I'm putting a new bounty on this question, as suggested by a similar question I've asked about here, and because here and there I don't see a real answer about how to do it, and what can be done with it.
I'd like to refine the questions into multiple pieces:
What is the API that can be used to get information of purchased apps? Where can I read about it? Please show a full, working example of how to do it.
Can it do more ? Maybe perform search? Maybe show free apps that were installed? Maybe the time they were installed and uninstalled? And the categories of those apps?
Are there any special requirements for using this API ?
EDIT: I'm putting a max bounty on this, because no matter how much I've read and tried, I still failed to make a POC that can query the apps from the Play Store that the user has ever downloaded (name, package name, date installed and/or removed, icon URL, price...), including both paid and free apps.
If anyone finds a working sample, show how it's done, and also show how you've found about it (documentation or anything that has led you to the solution). I can't find it anywhere, and the current solutions here are too vague for me to start from.
Issue is resolved. The exploit has been closed.
We will be closing this bug due to being logged in a Preview version of Android. If the issue is still relevant and reproducible in the latest public release (Android Q), please capture a bugreport and log the bug in https://source.android.com/setup/contribute/report-bugs. If a reply is not received within the next 14 days, this issue will be closed. Thank you for your understanding.
Latest update:
This is a bug and Google will address it in the next update.
We've deferred this issue for consideration in a future release. Thank
you for your time to make Android better
This answer has turned into a conglomeration of ideas and been edited to include information from discussion in the comments.
The androidmarket api, would be a customised api written by the developer. It's not available to the public.
To address your concerns in the comments. The developer would have utilised the current apis available through Android Developer and Google to create a project that manages all of these.
As for accessing Full Account Access, I'm not sure exactly how these developers have achieved this.
I'd recommend using the AccountManager, which is part of android.accounts, has access to credentials and a method getUserData. The account manager has access to passwords and is capable of creating and deleting accounts. This, possibly used with Content Provider
See Udinic/SyncAdapter Authentication.
To reply to your comment:
This blog should help you to get started. Write your own Android Authenticator.
How these apps actually work, I cannot tell you. They may also have different implementations (unless they're a collaborative effort behind the scenes, they most certainly will be different).
One guess. Firstly use GoogleSignInAccount with com.google.android.gms.auth.api.signin.
There a definition for scope, to determine the extent of the permissions the app is granted.
Using requestScopes(), the
public static final String PROFILE
.../ It lets your web app access over-the-air Android app installs.
For example:
GoogleSignInOptions gso =
new GoogleSignInOptions.Builder(GoogleSignInOptions.DEFAULT_SIGN_IN)
.requestEmail().
.requestScopes(new Scope("https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.readonly"))
.build();
If full access can be gained a list of all apps used by the account holder can be found and compared to what's on the device.
Package Manager will retrieve a list of all apps currently installed on the device.
PackageInfo provides the details about the app.
INSTALL_REASON_USER will also filter out apps that have been actively installed by the user.
You might want to look at com.google.firebase.appindexing and Log User Actions. Different actions can be tracked.
The users account history is found at https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity.
A helpful link is the OAuth 2.0 Playground.
This github repo node-google-play, using node, is current and will call Google Play APIs. As did the archive that was used as an "unofficial" api, android-market-api, to query the market place.
App 1
The app claims to use the following permissions:
Version 2.1.8 can access:
$ In-app purchases
Other
receive data from Internet
view network connections
full network access
use accounts on the device
prevent device from sleeping
read Google service configuration
Noteworthy, the app doesn't set any permissions when there was a basic, install. I was unable to use any of the features, as I have no paid apps. So for the initial search - there were no permissions needed, which would indicate the app didn't have access to my account.
I checked the permissions - there were none set. So the only thing required was to accept the pop up, as displayed in your question.
App 2
The other app you refer to that does the same thing is more upfront about what is being accessed.
My Paid Apps
SECURITY/PRIVACY NOTICE
The first time you run this app, it will ask for full permission to your Google account. This is unfortunately
the only way to access the required information. No personal
information is stored, no information about your apps is shared with
the developer of this app, nor shared with any third parties.
Everything is kept on your phone only.
I've gone into detail over these apps in this blog post, which was for a university capstone project (no monetary gain). I'm inclined to think this is an exploit in the API and not status by design by Google, as there are no API calls to fetch purchases of apps other than the developer's own app. I hypothesize it's a zero day exploit, in which case there's no legitimate way to access this information.
In case of one of these applications (My Paid Apps), after checking the network traffic it is pretty obvious that it does use the Store's Account page to retrieve the list of paid applications.
Now, the mechanism it uses is the same mechanism that Google Chrome currently, and Pokemon GO supposedly at a point in time used.
In a nutshell, steps to do so are as follow:
Login:
What the mentioned program do for the first step is to log the user in and get access to the user's access token. To do so, it uses the android.accounts.AccountManager.getAuthToken() method. (See more: AccountManager)
However, as for the token scope, oauth2:https://www.google.com/accounts/OAuthLogin is requested.
It might be important to note that based on the OAth2 documentation from Google, this scope is not valid; however, it seems like a valid scope for Google OAuth v1.
Converting the newly retrieved access token to a ubertoken:
Now, what actually ubertoken supposed to do, is unknown and there is no official documentation about it. However, it was seen in the wild to be used by chrome browser to login users.
This is done by requesting the https://accounts.google.com/OAuthLogin?source=ChromiumBrowser&issueuberauth=1 page.
Converting ubertoken to website session:
Later on, using the newly created ubertoken it is possible to get a website session using the https://accounts.google.com/MergeSession API endpoint. After this step, the application is essentially capable of loading all personal pages that you can open using your browser while logged in; except some special pages including Payment settings.
Retrieving the list of paid applications:
Requesting and parsing the https://play.google.com/store/account page.
Following is the application's traffic as captured by 'Packet Capture':
As it is clearly visible in the picture, the end result is identical to what I get when I normally open the store's account page on my PC with Chrome Desktop:
Side note:
It seems none of these endpoints are documented as they are primarily used by Google's own programs and should be considered internal. Therefore I strongly recommend not using them in any program or code that you expect to run for a long time or in a production environment.
Also, there is bad news here for you too, it seems that the Google Play's account page only lists paid applications or special free apps (more especially OEM apps). I will try to find some time and dig deeper into the other application.
Interesting articles:
Pokemon tokens
Exploiting Google Chrome's OAuth2 Tokens
If you have root access, You can access /data/data/com.android.vending/databases/library.db
OnePlus3T:/data/data/com.android.vending/databases
-rw-rw---- 1 u0_a2 u0_a2 229376 2018-12-26 18:01 library.db
This database has all information, which app you have downloaded, which apps you have purchased, and even in which app you have done IAP.
Check ownership table, It has all information.
ownership (account STRING, library_id STRING, backend INTEGER, doc_id STRING, doc_type INTEGER, offer_type INTEGER, document_hash INTEGER, subs_valid_until_time INTEGER, app_certificate_hash STRING, app_refund_pre_delivery_endtime_ms INTEGER, app_refund_post_delivery_window_ms INTEGER, subs_auto_renewing INTEGER, subs_initiation_time INTEGER, subs_trial_until_time INTEGER, inapp_purchase_data STRING, inapp_signature STRING, preordered INTEGER, owned_via_license INTEGER, shared_by_me INTEGER, sharer_gaia_id TEXT, shareability INTEGER, purchase_time INTEGER, PRIMARY KEY (account, library_id, backend, doc_id, doc_type, offer_type))
Dealing with unofficial Google APIs is incredibly complicated territory. It's going to be possible to get this to work, but that's all I'll say. Proceed at your own risk.
The first thing you're going to need to do is get a Google Play auth token. This can be done several ways, but here's how they do it in Purchased Apps:
public static String getAuthToken(Activity activity, String userEmail) {
AccountManager accountManager = AccountManager.get(activity);
Account userAccount = new Account(userEmail, "com.google");
Bundle options = new Bundle();
options.putBoolean("suppressProgressScreen", true);
String token;
try {
Bundle result = accountManager
.getAuthToken(userAccount, "androidmarket", options, activity, null, null)
.getResult();
token = result.getString("authtoken");
} catch (OperationCanceledException e) {
Log.d(TAG, "Login canceled by user");
return null;
} catch (IOException | AuthenticatorException e) {
Log.e(TAG, "Login failed", e);
return null;
}
return token;
}
A few things to note here:
The above code must be run asynchronously. I recommend RxJava, but an AsyncTask will work.
You must supply a email for the account you want to use. I'll leave the details up to you but this is fairly easy using AccountManager.
After you have an auth token, you can now access any Google Play Store endpoint. The main one used by Purchased Apps is https://android.clients.google.com/fdfe/purchaseHistory. Another one you might be interested in is https://android.clients.google.com/fdfe/details?doc=(package name) (from APKfetch code). Here's a page with some more and some analysis. If you make a request to these APIs, you'll need to supply several headers:
Authorization - "GoogleLogin auth=(your auth token)"
User-Agent - "Android-Finsky/6.4.12.C-all%20%5B0%5D%202744941 (api=3,versionCode=80641200,sdk=" + VERSION.SDK_INT + ",isWideScreen=0)";
X-DFE-Device-Id - your device's Google Services Framework ID, obtained from AdvertisingIdClient.
X-DFE-Client-Id - "am-android-google"
Accept-Language - The device's language code, eg "en".
Now, you need to parse the response. Here's where things get tricky. These APIs returns a message encoded as a Protobuf, so it's essentially just binary data unless you have a schema (which of course, only Google has). One way to go about this in theory is to decompile the Google Play Store app and reuse their generated protobuf models with a tool like JADX.
Unfortunately, I've tried this and it doesn't really work. Protobuf model classes are just too complex for a standard decompiler. What you can use is a tool called PBTK. You'll ideally want to run this on the Google Play Store 6.1.12 APK, since that's the last version before they started using ProGuard. Do note that this program has two errors in its script that need to be fixed before running it: changing 'extracto' to 'extractor' in gui.py and removing the assertion statement on line 500 of jar_extract.py.
Now, that should output all of the response classes as .proto files. Create a folder under src/main called proto and drag the entire generated 'com' directory to it. You can delete everything that's not under com/google/android/finsky/protos. Follow instructions online to setup Gradle with the Protobuf Lite plugin.
When you want to parse a response, you can use the ResponseWrapper class, since they all appear to be contained under that.
That's about as far as I can take you. There's a good chance I got some part of this wrong; JADX is your best friend here, because the best way to figure out what an app is doing is by looking at its code. Hope this helps and happy developing!
you can get the package name of all installed apps on device and then get the information of every installed package that you find in the device from google play without any need to get to user account. there is some third party or unofficial apis to get google play apps details as json by getting the app package name. for example: https://42matters.com/
then use the received information for every package to find free ones.
i have two resources for you to consider, but first, in a word, no. there is no api from GOOGLE to let you do what you want, as these metrics arent stored in the phone, they are on the google play store servors, and google has no OFFICIAL api for the play store. you can however glean some info from these two sites:
https://www.quora.com/Is-there-an-API-for-the-Google-Play-Storeenter link description here
https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/162146/how-to-see-all-the-apps-i-have-downloaded-from-google-play-store
and this is enough to see how to accomplish this.
first, a list of what apps have been downloaded by an account is only referencable by the account. and this can be done through the play store. since your app will be installed on that users phone, this dosnt matter... you're in.
second, you will need a 3rd party API built for the GOOGLE PLAY STORE, there are some out there, check the first link.
using the api of your choice, you will send a get request, to the play store, and in return you should receive in most cases a json object to deserialize.
deserialize the object, and you will have your list. which list you get will depend on the endpoint you use, but that should be explained by/in the API itself.
good luck!
i have 2 different apps in the appstore, i am saving some data in a database (sql) like uid, ip, what page the user is on etc.
Is there a way to give a unique visitor an id or something like that so i can track the users activity in both apps.
And is it possible to see what buttons the user is clicking on.
I have added google analytics to the app but i only can see that there is a user on com.example.mainactivity and not the html pages that are the app.
Hope you guys understand what i mean.
You can use Google analytics to solve this problem with two different approaches. You can use the built in userId feature and it will even keep track of cross device sessions.
/**
* An example method called when a user signs in to an authentication system.
* #param User user represents a generic User object returned by an authentication system on sign in.
*/
public void onUserSignIn(User user) {
// Be careful when creating new trackers -- it is possible to create multiple trackers for the
// same tracking Id.
Tracker t = GoogleAnalytics.getInstance(context).newTracker("UA-XXXX-Y");
// You only need to set User ID on a tracker once. By setting it on the tracker, the ID will be
// sent with all subsequent hits.
t.set("&uid", user.getId());
// This hit will be sent with the User ID value and be visible in User-ID-enabled views (profiles).
t.send(new HitBuilders.EventBuilder().setCategory("UX").setAction("User Sign In").build());
}
Alternatively, you can use the Data Import feature to import external user infromation from multiple sources such as CRM data base and your SQL data base and you need to map their user representations to your own custom dimensions. You can follow the example in "Importing User Data to create AdWords Remarketing Lists" article. It shows how to use a custom dimension to represent a user id, and then upload even more custom dimensions about that user.
ga('create', 'UA-XXXX-Y', 'auto');
ga('require', 'displayfeatures');
ga('set', 'dimension1', 'NNNN'); // Where NNNN represents the CRM User Id.
ga('send', 'pageview');
Remember though Google Analytics does not support sending Personally Identifiable information, see the TOS.
I am trying to verify user by sending sms through twilio (Android Application).
Here is the Detailed summary-
(As in Snapchat)
During signup i want to validate user by sending dynamic run-time code to user mobile.
and after sending i have the verification field.
so what should i do ?
Twilio employee here.
This is a really common use case for Twilio and plenty of apps do the "phone number verification" thing you're looking for.
Let me boil down the steps on how to do this in human form, as this is much easier to explain than writing a bunch of code:
A user will type their phone number into a field to be verified.
When the user has typed in their number, you can compute a unique code (4 - 6 digits is all you need) however you like, and then use our REST API to send the number they entered the code.
At this point, you should save the unique code so you can reference it later.
Prompt the user to enter the code into a field within your app.
Compare the entered code to unique number you stored them and viola!
If the code is the same: you know that they own the phone number that you sent the message to. A very similar process is described in this 2-factor authentication how-to.
I hope that makes sense.
If you have any questions, please ask.
Disclaimer: I'm the maintainer of Django-phone-verify
While phait's answer is apt. People had asked in comments of the relevant apps with which they could accomplish user verification. Most of this is from my previous answer at https://stackoverflow.com/a/57461296/3535547 I'm just pasting an updated answer in this thread so that it is easier for users to find it.
What you're looking to accomplish is very easy with django-phone-verify app. It comes with Twilio and Nexmo already integrated and few endpoints which you can extend as per your use case.
This package aims at verifying if a phone number requested by a particular client belongs to them. It also takes care of ensuring that the same device provides the verification of passcode which initially requested a passcode to be sent, saving you a few hours of work.
This package also doesn't mess up with your current user model at all. You're free to use this package exactly for one thing: verifying phone numbers. Whether you do it for users, companies etc. depends on your use-case.
It follows Unix philosophy of Do one thing; do it well
Installation
pip install django-phone-verify
Configuration
Add app to INSTALLED_APPS:
# In settings.py:
INSTALLED_APPS = [
...
'phone_verify',
]
Add settings in your settings.py file:
# Settings for phone_verify
PHONE_VERIFICATION = {
'BACKEND': 'phone_verify.backends.twilio.TwilioBackend',
'TWILIO_SANDBOX_TOKEN':'123456',
'OPTIONS': {
'SID': 'fake',
'SECRET': 'fake',
'FROM': '+14755292729'
},
'TOKEN_LENGTH': 6,
'MESSAGE': 'Welcome to {app}! Please use security code {otp} to proceed.',
'APP_NAME': 'Phone Verify',
'OTP_EXPIRATION_TIME': 3600 # In seconds only
}
Migrate the database:
python manage.py migrate
You get two endpoints (Check API docs), one for registration of phone number and other to verify the passcode. You may override verify endpoint to also create a user as described in the usage docs: https://github.com/CuriousLearner/django-phone-verify/blob/master/docs/usage.rst
I am currently developing an app where I have been using temboo to search a user on Facebook. I am able to get the basic results which do not need any additional permissions.
But for fields like education history, about_me etc, I need to include additional permissions to retrieve these fields.
Could you please let me know how to add these permissions to the temboo FQLinputsets?
Thanks!
I work at Temboo.
I would recommend using our OAuth Helper Choreos to go through the OAuth process, and request an additional set of permissions:
https://www.temboo.com/library/Library/Facebook/OAuth/
In the first step of the OAuth process, you'll run the InitializeOAuth choreo. This is where you can specify the permissions you need to request by passing a comma-separated list of permissions to the "Scope" input. You'll want to pass user_education_history,about_me along with any other permissions you'd like to request. Here's an example of the input set:
// Set inputs
initializeOAuthInputs.set_AppID("YOUR_FACEBOOK_APP_ID");
initializeOAuthInputs.set_Scope("user_education_history,about_me");
Then you can complete the OAuth process by running the FinalizeOAuth choreo. This will return an access token that should have the permission you need to retrieve those fields.
https://www.temboo.com/library/Library/Facebook/OAuth/FinalizeOAuth/
There is a video tutorial about the OAuth Choreos here:
https://www.temboo.com/videos#oauthchoreos
Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any other questions.
Cormac