Android Google Maps Development with Emulator - Repository of Standard APKs - android

I am a newbie to Android programming and i started putting together an application using Google Maps using Eclipse with KitKat SDK. I developed a simple app to display Google Maps in the Emulator by installing com.android.vending(4.6.16) and com.google.android.gms(4.3.25) apks. I downloaded these APKs from different sites(not sure how authentic they are).
I am making use of the command aapt dump badging to determine the version.
The map opens but i was repeatedly getting a message that "Unfortunately Play Services has stopped"
Objective is to ensure that I am using the right set of APKs with the emulator
The trouble that i am facing is there seems to be no clear directives on where i can find the authentic version of these APKs. I tried Google Play and when i give a search for com.google.android.gms, it yields a result of applications. I was expecting a URL to download the recent version of the APK. Correct me if i am wrong
1. How to download just the recent version of APKs from Google Play ? Am i looking at the correct site
2. Second is there any authorized site from where i can download these APKs?
I was looking for a listing of the APKs with the version number against it. So that i can download the version that i need. I am not sure of the dependencies of the APKs on the Android platform.
3. Finally is there any dependency between com.google.android.gms.apk and the com.android.vending.apk on the basis of the version or the SDK platform used?
Thanks
Govindarajan

I have a suggestion, Try to use Genymotions for testing maps/places app. it is faster than emulator and you can build and check maps application.
www.genymotion.com/‎
LINK

Related

Distribute apk outside play store (to non gms devices)

I have this app released on play store that I want to make available on my website. I tried downloading the signed apk via the Google play console and use that, but some users in China have issues installing it.
They get a message like this while installing: "Your device does not support Google Play Services and cannot install "
I have a few Google sdk bits referenced in my project (signin, safetyNet, ads) which I would assume I need to delete before building for this apk version, since target devices don't have gms..
What about signing? Can I simply build without the said code and distribute it? (Generate release apk in android studio) Or do I need to upload to play console and download the one signed from google?
Please let me know if you have any clues on this, been banging my head around for a few days already.
Cheers :)
This might help you taking your decision:
If you have Play App Signing enabled, the APK generated through your studio and the APK generated through Play Console will have different signatures.
Otherwise, both approaches will have the same signatures.
So, it depends whether you care about your APK on website having the same signature as Play Store. If you don't care about having same signature, you can go ahead with creating APK from Android Studio itself and publish to your website.
If your app utilizes Google Play Services, as is informed by the error message, then it WILL not run on the device unless Google Play Services and everything that it depends on is installed on the device. The only work around is to convert your app features that uses Google Play Services to its alternative that's supported in China.
I've dealt with similar issue on Huawei smartphones, my approach was to 'develop another app' using Huawei SDK, check out https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/ for its complete reference

Can't publish Xamarin.Forms App's APK file on Google Play Store

I want to publish my Xamarin.Forms App to Google Play Store. But when I upload the APK it gives me warning and disables roll-out option. It says we need to use Android App Bundle (.aab) format so that APK can be optimized for size and resources.
Currently, Visual Studio 2019 Archive option does not support the Android App Bundle. I have taken latest update of Visual Studio 2019 but still above format is not supported.
I googled and found some link to do this from the command prompt by modifying some settings in the Project file. But the build returns errors after couple of minutes with exit code 1.
This is frustrating as I can't publish it to Google Play Store. I have already published the iOS version of App.
Any help here will be very much appreciated.
Me and my team are currently releasing to Google Play with no problems our app as APK.
The App Boundle is a nice way to release smaller applications by delivering just what the device that downloads your application needs. The Xamarin Show published recently a video on this topic, that could be of interest for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IOZ0SUKZq4
Through the following images i show how we upload/publish our APK:
First, in the image below you see that APKs are still supported:
APK uploads correctly:
Then we are able to save and review the APK:
APK is uploaded with warning:
The warning states:
For now we just ignore the warning and go on to roll out:
In case that after following those steps your Start Rollout option is not yet enabled, it might be the case that you still have some other Listing Sections for your Application. After you introduce all the information required by Google, the Start Rollout option must be available.

Auto push android apk to google play using google play service

I want to push android apk to google play using google play service in automated way.
As of now I am building my android app using Ant and windows batch scripts and able to get the .apk file without any manual intervention.
Now I want to upload the generated .apk file to google play using google play services with help of ant and windows batch scripts in automated way.
When I google i come to know that by using gradle I can do it, but I am unable to build my project using gradle. So, I don't want to go this way.
I am able to push .apk to google play manually using my google play developer console.
Now I what to automate this process, How can i achieve this.
There's quite a bit of handling required with the Google Play Services API, for which the Windows batch commands are likely insufficient.
Since you don't want to change your project to Gradle, have you given a bit of thought to using Jenkins? It can be a light weight "provisioning" server on your system, that achieves what you want by using the Jenkins Google Play Android Publisher Plugin (see the complete step by step instructions). The good part is you don't have to change your Ant project. You can in future even automate more of your dev-test-deploy cycle by leveraging more of Jenkins capabilities.
You might want to look into Fastlane (and Supply in particular): https://github.com/fastlane/fastlane/tree/master/supply#readme
Basically, it's a command-line tool to upload binaries, screenshots and changelogs to Google Play.

Google Play Service library in Android

Hello I am trying to use google-play-services_lib in my android project. As you know in android phone there is Google Play Service APK which provide a some features to you such as location fetching etc.
So I have confusion that Suppose user have Google Play Service APK version is 4.3 and I am using Google Play Services library version is 4.0.30 in android project to build the app.
Do we require same version on both side like build with same latest Google play service library and Google Play Services installed APK to make as like Push Notification, Location fetching work in this case or there is no link between them ?
Thanks in advance
They don't have to match.
The development of the library and the application is not completely dependant, that's why thier version number is different. As far as I know, each release of the services apk defines a maximum version of the library that is supported. So the only conflict could happen when the services apk is outdated (on the target device), and your application's library is a newer one.
The best you can do is to update the library, and the services application on your device.
It should work that way.
I dont think so that there is link between APK and supported libraries in that because the APK silently gets updated about libraries

Missing Google Play Services from AVD

I recently started developing for Android, and I have come into trouble when trying to use Google Maps in my app. I downloaded the Google Maps API v2 for Android, and have already performed all the required steps according to Google Developers Site.
My problem is that although the app runs, in the place where the maps should be displayed there is a texts saying that my device is missing Google Play Services.
I have already downloaded the Google Play Services from the SDK, imported the library into my project and also importing the .JAR file.
I am using Netbeans, not Eclipse, so many solutions I have found over the web aren`t useful for me. I hope you can help me with this.
Unfortunately, you can't use the emulator to run apps that use Google Play services. From http://developer.android.com/google/play-services/setup.html: "Google Play services is not supported on the Android emulator — to develop using the APIs, you need to provide a development device such as an Android phone or tablet."
From google's own site http://developer.android.com/google/play-services/setup.html
If you want to test your app on the emulator, expand the directory for
Android 4.2.2 (API 17) or a higher version, select Google APIs, and
install it. Then create a new AVD with Google APIs as the platform
target. Note: Only Android 4.2.2 and higher versions of the Google
APIs platform include Google Play services.
I had this same problem and found solution:
Here are the updated gms and vending files. Same instructions as before: Create a new emulator with any cpu/abi, a non google-api target (versions 10-17 work) and gpu emulation on or off, and then install the files:
adb install com.android.vending-20130716.apk
adb install com.google.android.gms-20130716.apk
If you are upgrading an existing emulator then you might need to uninstall previous versions by:
adb uninstall com.android.vending
adb uninstall com.google.android.gms
Bellow link contains a solution that works with Android 4.2.2 or higher
How to install Google Play Services in Android Emulator
1.1 Start your emulator. Disconnect any other Android device (such as your smartphone) from computer.
1.2 Download these two files
com.android.vending-19032013.apk : http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?7jfar2v1bzx6v59
com.google.android.gms-19032013.apk : http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?4o9fz413uavlblf
1.3 Open command console, go to \platform-tools
Install two files above with command
adb install \com.android.vending-19032013.apk
adb install \com.google.android.gms-19032013.apk
Yes, you can use Google maps on emulator. However, it's not officially supported, so takes some work. I had the best success following the info on this link.
I found this, i hope it helps you ;)
Installing Google Play on Android Emulator
Run Google Play Services in your emulator
If anyone is still experiencing this issue, first try to create your emulator with the Google API's as the platform target. After doing so, I noticed that my Google Play Services was not the correct version on the emulator.
While trying to hack together a solution, I stumbled upon the GoogleApiAvailability class here. Google did a phenomenal job handling compatibility issues.
GoogleApiAvailability.isGooglePlayServicesAvailable(Context) returns an integer status code, which can be fed directly into getErrorDialog(Activity, errorCode, requestCode) which returns a Dialog that works perfectly right out of the box. If your Play Services are out of date, the dialog will redirect you to an updater... If they are missing, it will redirect you to an installer, etc...
Thought I would share this great feature in case anyone is looking for a fix that would work in production code as well as testing.

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