Background
I wish to get the account details of the user (just the email) that was used in order to download the app from the play store.
The reason is very simple: In-App-Billing allows to add something that is called "developer payload" (described on this google IO lecture) to purchases, so that it will verify that the purchase is legit, because it has a tag that identifies the purchase with the current user.
I think other people can think of other reasons to get it. maybe for saving games progress , for example.
The problem
Currently, All I know that you can do is to get ALL of the accounts (using the AccountManager as shown here) .
However, I'm not sure if that's the best thing to do.
The question
How do I achieve such a thing?
Also, is getting the list of all of the accounts also a good thing for this purpose (in app billing verification) ? Is it even a good thing to put the account info into the developer-payload of the purchase?
Related
I recently launched mobile app I found a purchase made by the user for some reason for this transaction my app could not capture customer details nowhere I could find in console customer details like mail id phone number I was under impression iap report from Google play will provide all these details & hence in my app not annoying my users to provide their details at time of purchase but it looks like Google does not share these details
What is my next step?
Please help, don't want to keep my customer waiting
Thank you
Google does not provide the developer with customer details in the course of processing an IAP. This is probably "by design"; after all, if you don't need someone's personal information to complete the purchase, why should they give it to you?
Also note there are legal concerns here, such as GDPR. You may prefer that Google deals with all that heavy stuff, so you don't have to.
If you happen to have certain information at the time the order is made, you can supply it as the developerPayload member of the purchase. That will attach the information to your order. Otherwise, you're pretty much stuck with what you have.
Or, if you'd like to implement Google Sign-In in your app, you'll find that you can get a great deal of information about your user, at the cost of a single button press.
So I got my first Android phone about 8 years ago and I created a Google account to buy apps and later use to comment on Youtube. now even tho I never personally attacked anyone or cyberbullied anyone. I did comment on videos saying certain things sucked or were stupid or gave my opinion on things which would start fights with people. I wasn't going thru a good time back then I had a lot of stress and I was depressed with graduating Highschool and not knowing what to do with my life along with other things. Now as of today I still own the account and as I bought a good number of apps with it I would always just use that account to buy things, but I no longer want to be tied to all these stupid things I've said on Youtube or Google+. Is there a way to delete my Youtube account? I never had a channel where I posted videos but can I delete the Youtube account part of my Google account so my Comments will be gone? I don't think you can but is there a way to transfer my purchased apps to another again or link an account to them, Google only introduced the family share thing after I bought the majority of my apps. Thanks for any help
it's unfortunately not possible to transfer paid apps to a different Google account.
You can do this..
Go into your phone Menu -> Accounts -> Google -> choose the account -> and choose what you want to sync. You can limit it to Account Data or even sync nothing.
Then, you can still get access to all your paid content and not have deal with all the other stuff that was on the account. Purchases you make are still available. It just won't automatically update anymore if you happen to still use that account on another device
Okay, something really dumb happened to my friend.
He submitted an Android application a few weeks ago that offers In-App Purchases to the user.
Now, he needed to update the .apk to fix a bug, but he actually lost the keystore that he used to sign the application the other day (what a dumbass...). He tells me it's definitely lost. He exhausted all options to find or restore it, but without success. So, as he understands, the only way to submit the update is to actually create a new application in the Google Play Developer Console. He is so dumb, I always tell him to do backups of important files, he just won't listen (wow, really, such a blockhead...)!!!! sigh...
Luckily, he only had a handful of users who actually purchased something in his app during that time. However, I would like to know (for my friend) if there is any way to transfer the In App Purchases from the same user from the old app to the new one, so that the users who bought something in the app and now want to update it, won't get punished for his stupidity and have to purchase the same items again....
AFAIK, there is no way to do that. The only option is to refund them and ask them to buy again in the new app. I believe refunding can be done by logging in to Merchant account.
Google Play does not provide any form of content delivery. You are
responsible for delivering the digital content that you sell in your
applications. In-app products are always explicitly associated with
one and only one app. That is, one application cannot purchase an
in-app product published for another app, even if they are from the
same developer.
And BTW, Does the app have any backend? Where in he saved data of all purchases made?
is that OK and safe to set a value in SharedPreference to flag that the user have purchased this item? What if user hack this value in SharedPreference. Or I need to connect IAP service everytime to check that before user can use it?
(1) What is the best practice when I use Google Android IAP V3?
(2) And also if user's device have no Google Play installed, I may want to use paypal to make the payment, but how to track the purchase and unlock the features for users if I ask user to use simple paypal payment to get a license key? I do not want to use any other billing SDK, if with Paypal web page to buy the license, How to implement this?
(1) What is the best practice when I use Google Android IAP V3?
--> official document says that only payment transaction will be handle by google play itself, but in the application you have to set your business logic how you handle UI integration and other things after product purchase. You can also go with the in app purchase v3.
(2) And also if user's device have no Google Play installed, I may want to use paypal to make the payment, but how to track the purchase and unlock the features for users if I ask user to use simple paypal payment to get a license key? I do not want to use any other billing SDK, if with Paypal web page to buy the license, How to implement this?
--> You can ask user to update google play version dynamically. Google developer doc says more than 90% device using 2.2 os with installed google play store. I could not say any thing about paypal transaction because I haven't use it before, but yes in app purchase using v3 is very simple to implement and understand the payment process.
How to use in your application
Three way to manage your application's product data.
1) SharedPrefrence:
you can use the share prefrence value and check whether it is purchased or not. if in case user uninstalled the app and then re-install the app then you can check whether user has purchased or not, at this you get the item is already purchased. And you have to manage the user to access your application data.
2) local database:
you can also use local sqlite database to store the purchase detail and purchase status. and same as above if user clear data or uninstall the app then request for the purchase item again and check whether user purchased item or not.
or
2) Server database:
It is the better way compare to above if you are using web server to store the user data. In this type, you doesn't even need to manage for the second time for the case if user uninstall the app or clear the application data.
3) obfuscation: (Most efficient way compare to shared prefrence)
EDIT:
is that OK and safe to set a value in SharedPreference to flag that the user have purchased this item? What if user hack this value in SharedPreference. Or I need to connect IAP service everytime to check that before user can use it?
While I am searching on internet I found Nikolay Elenkov's answer like below:
If you just save a flag in shared preferences, any user with a rooted
device can flip the flag at will and be 'subscribed' without paying.
So you should at least do some obfuscation. Here's a sample way to do
it. Additionally, there is an API to check for subscription state, so
you should check periodically to make sure the subscription is valid.
more information check Nikolay Elenkov's answer
What is the best for billing Either In app purchase or Paypal?
It is depends on the product type,
--> In app billing: Best for google in app billing,
For the digital products including downloadable content such as media
files or
photos, virtual content such as game levels or potions, premium
services and features, and more.
http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/index.html
--> Paypal: Best for Paypal billing,
For physical content or product do you want to share. You are not
permitted to sell physical goods or services using 'In-App Purchasing'
since the goods purchased via this method must relate directly to the
app using them.
Purchase physical product from iPhone app without Apple in app purchase
Hope it will help you.
from the documentation:
Because the Google Play client now caches In-app Billing information
locally on the device, you can use the Version 3 API to query for this
information more frequently, for example through a getPurchases call.
Unlike with previous versions of the API, many Version 3 API calls
will be serviced through cache lookups instead of through a network
connection to Google Play, which significantly speeds up the API's
response time.
Which basically means you can look up the purchase each time and the Play Store app will respond pretty much right away.
From my experience I can assure you of one thing.
** In fact it's bad to put a flag with a bool saying if it's premium or not **.
What I do is obfuscate the shared code
After I create some strange strings or numbers that only identify through the code inside the app if the user is a premium user.
Along with this, except for a numeric code within the database that identifies the type of purchase. So by checking both I can make sure the user is premium.
At this point if they want to cheat me with the root of the phone they should first understand how the code of my app works and then understand where to interact, because if only the shared preferences change, nothing will change and they will be whipped.
** This doesn't translate to high security, but at least the security level is higher and the root won't be able to get a reward that easily. Also because they should understand what are the exact codes to insert in the shared, in the database and look for them by removing the obfuscation. I honestly don't think it's worth it for them. **
As what Kuffs has mentioned, it is best to query the app-side implementation of the In-App Billing library which in turn queries the device's Google Play client. This will ensure that the purchase history most recently obtained from the Google Play servers would be reliable and relatively fresh information.
Also, keep in mind that if you are distributing the app on Google Play you MUST use the Google Play payment mechanism via In-App Billing. As it stands, Google Play and Wallet do NOT yet support Paypal or wire/bank transfer methods so you should not integrate the option if you are releasing it on Play.
http://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html#payments
I'm starting to make some in-app purchases on my future app, and i wish to ask some questions regarding the new API (3) of the in app billing library (shown here):
google says (here) that there are no more unmanaged items. this means that in order to have multiple consumable items, the play store cannot hold a counter, so you need to either consume the purchase right when you put it in the app, or only when you need it.
My question about it is how would you get the consumable items stay on multiple devices? for example, if the user purchased 2 health potions, and because of the new limitations, they both are stored only on the app itself of one device, how could the end user go to another device , run the app and see that he has 2 health potions?
is it possible to make some purchases for free on some cases, programmatically ?
it could be useful for testing or on some cases when i want to reward the user for something he has done . i might even want to do it completely transparent and without any dialogs.
i know that there is a sandbox mode but that's only available by adding specific accounts as test accounts .
the lecture speaks of a "developer payload" (here) that you can put on the purchases for better security. they said that the data should be an id of the user, but they don't say what id i should use (only gave an example of google plus , which many people don't have).
my question is: what should be used for the "developer payload" ? if i use the sample, what do they use, and is it safe to use it or should i change it ?
i also don't understand how could it be useful, since the play store should always hold data as to which user has which items, so how could the play store be fooled on this? or maybe they talk about protection from changing the apk of the app?
is it possible to make a transaction of multiple purchases ? if so, can i hide those that don't cost money ? and if all are for free, maybe not show anything at all ?
Answer 1)
The way I have found for the question 1 is given below.
if your application used server database(stored data on server using internet connection) then you can simply stored data for particular user,Like if user has purchased 2 health potions and when user trying to use that 2 health potion from the another device then simply checked it is purchased by that user previously or not. if it is already purchased by that user then simply restrict that user to purchase potions again.
Answer 2)
Google is provided trial period for the subscription product. so that user can purchase that item as $0.00 amount as a trial period and when time expired(time can be 7day or more) item can be changed it's type as subscription item with credit card information as like simple purchase flow.
but, you used word "pro grammatically and without any dialog" then according to my knowledge Google will not provide it for the single user or for the particular user. you can simply give trial period value in the Google console for the all application user.
check this link for more detail: "Free trials" http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/billing_subscriptions.html#administering
Answer 3)
I would like to suggest you for the developer payload, first of all it is not mandatory you can pass either blank string or with developer payload. According to my knowledge it should be working like "security code" same as you given in the Google site while searching content "Some Random String".
how to use developer payload and what should be use for developer payload
check this link
Developer payload is useful for the application?
I think it is working like security code like Random String, and while you retrieve data you can verify that item that was purchased is same or not so that if in case some kind of hacker can be redirect to the other product then you can check it at response time, is it the same product as you are going to purchased or not and user can be protect from unnecessarily withdrawn money from his account.
and also check given link I have explained more for the developer payload.