I have a webservice that requiers accounts. As a complement I have built an app that can be used with the account on the website.
Do I have to provide the possibility to create an account through the app or is it enough to reference to the website?
If you have to be registered to use the application, you must allow:
users to register in the app
users to log in in the app
allow the users to use the application without any account (maybe with less functionnalities).
If not, the app may be rejected.
there's no Google enforced practices of banning app or anything like this. You can release your app however you prefer.
But be warned that apps with a Login button, but if you want to Sign up you have to go to the web are usually not very successful apps and have very poor ratings on the Google Play.
Related
I am working on an app that'll be available to specific customers, after figuring out that this approach does not work, I am switching to pushing it to the public as a free app but give login credentials to specific users. Would that violate any of the subscription rules by android? would the app be taken down if people can't sign up, knowing I will charge for the account personally?
You can do this easily using Firebase Authentication. Here is the documentation for it.
Just connect your app to Firebase, create login screen with Activity and create accounts with the usernames and passwords for your users and give them the credentials.
As for the Google Play billing policies, I believe this violates their rule that you should only get paid through Google Play so they get 30% of the income, however, if it all happens outside of the app, and there are no platforms to get paid through (like PayPal) integrated in the app itself, it shouldn't be a problem as far as I know.
I would like to know if it is possible to set a password for downloadinf my app from google play, so only people who have this password can download it?
No. You can't. The best thing you can do is:
Add security to your application
If you only want selected users to use your app, then provide some sort of security to it (at application level) via a login screen so that only users of your "service" are able to use the app by prompting them to enter an email/username and password.
Release the application through the Beta testing process
Google Play offers a beta testing process where you can publish your application as a Beta (or alpha) version and then make the application available to users via a shared link
No that isn't possible. You can however require a password when the user tries to open your app for the first time. You can build your own authentication server and use for this purpose.
In my android application I want to let users to authenticate with google or facebook account.
I've implemented sign-in with google already.
I'll try to implement sign-in with facebook soon.
I've read about IAP in android:
https://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_overview
https://droidmentor.com/inapppurchase-subscription/
at least what I understand it is about google account authentication.
So I wonder is it possible to make IAP in android application if the user is authenticated with facebook account ?
I cant find examples or explanations by now.
Any good examples/explanations about IAP with google is also very appreciated because I still don't have a clear vision on IAP.
fyi: In my app user will be able to buy "virtual tickets pack" (e.g.: 10, 15, 20 tickets) and to add them to their profile. and later they will "consume" tickets one by one.
Best Regards
My understanding is that you already have a user system that you are using to provide a Google login to your customers. When you add Facebook login, you'll probably want to match both Google and Facebook logins with your own custom user ID. It's always a good idea to have a custom ID of your own so that you can map it to different types of logins.
When purchasing through Google Play Billing, the purchase gets associated with the user's phone Google account and you can also provide an optional way of associating a purchase with your own user account system. In order to do that, when building the BillingFlowParams, call setAccountId and pass your account's system custom ID.
To provide the best experience persisting purchases during installs or across devices you should also be saving the purchases on your server's database. In order to do that in a secure manner, you will also have to implement server-side receipt validation. If you want to avoid most of these headaches, I recommend you to use a service like RevenueCat.
IAP can only be done through the user's google account, as that is what one needs to use any part of the Play Store. The user's google account is also where the credit card/other payment methods are stored for each user.
In spite of the above, the way users log into your app has nothing to do with them using the IAP system. When a user will choose to use an IAP, the google account data will be provided by the android device/Play Store, not by your app (Off subject:the process is similar on iOS if you ever get to try there).
What your app needs to do, is receive the confirmation of purchase from the IAP sdk and then mark on your server that this particular user has purchased this item. Basically for any purchases (no matter the payment provider) you would usually mark in your DB the following:
what the user has purchased
how much did he pay
when did he pay
provider's id of the purchase, so you can later match the accounting reports with the payment provider's report
where he payed from (IP can be a good indicator, although in the age of VPNs not necessarily 100% acurate)(this can be useful for your marketing decisions)
mark that this user now has access to the item he purchased and if it is a time limited item, mark when it expires, so you are able to later check if he still has the right to access it.
Disclaimer:
I have not used the android IAP system directly before. I have implemented mobile app payment systems before using iOS IAP and on android Braintree payments. But the process is most likely very similar with android IAPs as well.
I am trying to understand the Android Application Licensing. I read most of the documentation on the android website about this subject, but I'm still confused.
Here is my dilema:
I create an Android app and I'm deciding whether I want to release it as a paid app or in-app billing. Now, I'm currently looking into releasing the app as paid. My understanding is that I can submit the app to android google play ( or market) as paid and specify the price of the app and that's it.
However, I see that google provides the Application Licensing service which seems to allow Google to control a list of users who purchase the app and verify that the user has indeed paid for the app. Otherwise prevent users who have illegally installed the paid app on their devices if they didn't purchased it. Please correct me if I'm wrong so far.
Now, it seems that when the application is first executed, it will use Google's application licensing to check whether the user is authenticated. What will happen if the user does not have internet connectivity? Will the app still be able to launch or will the app require internet connectivity in order to run every time?
Thank you
Andy
Of course checking the license need internet connectivity.Android is doing this using the google play services client in your device.
But the decision making on allowing user access is given to us.We can implement the Policy interface, There we get two methods, processServerResponse() and allowAccess().
processServerResponse(), lets us to preprocess the response we got from licensing server like storing the licensing information locally etc.
allowAccess() decides whether to grant the user access to the application.In this method we can decide whether to allow the user access in case of no internet connectivity.(some policy like, user can gain access 5 times without internet connection etc.)
Say a company would like to purchase my app for each of its employees. Each employee has their own Google account. But, in order for the company to pay for the app for their account, they need to log in with their account, and have access to the company's credit card information. Is there any convenient way for a company to purchase an app for its employees?
You may have to implement a licencing system. Have the market version of the app require a key be entered before it starts working. You'll need a backend system to manage the creation and usage of these keys that will also provision the app on the phones.
There may be a better way but I've never heard of a "gifting" mechanism for the Android market.