I have some functionality for rating my app and for viewing/installing other apps I have on the marketplace that I need to test in the android avd emulator. To do this I need to have the latest google play apk installed but I am unsure of the official location to download this from so I can install it on to the emulator.
Lot's of the sources I have found are for file sharing sites and out of date apks and I would be grateful for a link to the official apk. For some reason best known to themselves I don;t seem to be ble to get it from the main google play site. this is most confusing!
Or is there another way to test market app functionality on an emulator?
what you are looking for is: "market://details?id=" + APP_PNAME
I strongly recommend using the android code snippet app rater
good luck
First, this is not a programming question. Second, there is no such thing as an 'official download location'. The Play Store application is only available on licensed devices. Even if you pulled the apk from your device, it won't run on the emulator as is, since it requires other components as well. So, test on a real device if you need access to the Market/Play store.
Related
I am trying to develop an application on the Recon Jet and I am running into some issues. I am currently trying to run the Google Mobile Vision sample application called "FaceTracker." After running it on the Jet, I get an error message that says: FaceTracker relies on Google Play services, which is not supported by your device. Contact the manufacturer for assistance. Is there a way I can get Play services on the device? I have tried installing it's apk onto the device through ADB to no avail.
The device runs Android 4.2.1 and has a custom launcher so I can't access standard Android apps, although it does run a full fledged Android OS.
If anyone has any ideas, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Aaron
As an example see cyanogen mod google play implementation
Based from this blog, this method requires root access.
Download a couple of APKs, you can usually find the newest bundle in a
zip package on XDA
Developers:
Google Play Store (the newest version you can find)
Google Services Framework
Google Login Service/Account Manager
If you are rooted you can copy them to your root directory to
System/App using a root manager like ES File
Explorer.
Then just restart your device.
If this doesn't work first time you might need to change the
permissions on the new APKs to match the rest on your device. Use a
file explorer like ES for this. Apparently if you're not rooted you
can simply install each APK then reboot and it works for some devices.
Reboot and add your Google account in Settings > Accounts > Add
account.
Look for the Play Store in your app drawer.
Hope this helps!
I have to distribute Android apps within my organization. I have a google developer account. Below it tells to login to the admin console to enable private channel.
https://support.google.com/a/answer/2494992?hl=en
Problem -it does not sign me in as Google help states that
my.account#company.com, doesn't have an administrator but is instead managed by Google.
Requirement - So how can i get the administrator account.
Any help will be appreciated.
Regards
You can provide the .apk files directly to your organization.
Either you can allow to download a signed .apk file through a web site which will launch the install procedure or you can make an app market which provides a list of .apk files and installs them automatically, as Amazon's App Shop.
I'm not sure if Google account allows you to share app locally. But we use Hockeyapp to do the same. It works great. You can even integrate it to your app and upload the crashes too. Many other features. Take a look at this to know other solutions. It supports iOS as well as Android and offers a good user experience.
But you've to pay a bit for it. CashAnalytics is free. Do small research for yourself.
I have used crashlytics for this purpose in my last project.
It works great for beta distribution in development phase.
Also, it's crash reporting is excellent to guide you to the source code line causing crashes.
I uploaded an app I developed to google play. Since the app isn't free, google doesn't allow me to download it to my device.
The first users who tried to download my app claimed they got the 505 error (by leaving their comments on google play).
I read some threads about this error here on stackoverflow and made some changes that hopefully fix the problem, but how can I check it myself? Do I need to use other people's devices and pay each time I want to check if my app is downloadable or is there a better option ?
thanks
edit: just to be clear - I'm looking for a way to see whether people can download and install my app without getting any error messages. Preferably by going to the google play and downloading it myself.
The app itself works great once it's downloaded and installed. The problem was that people couldn't download/install it on their device.
You can use Google Administration to check erros and statistics for your apps.
Login to your Google Account on this page:
https://play.google.com/apps/publish
There you'll find all your uploaded apps. You'll also find crash reports, etc. Just for better administration of your apps.
To test your app the best way is to use the debug or Run 'app' option in Android Studio. If you want to test the signed apk you can also build it inside Android Stuido with the Build -> Generate Signed APK option.
Or you use the console commands if you don't use an IDE.
Check the documentation of the ADB (Android Debug Bridge)
http://developer.android.com/tools/help/adb.html
I hope this helps.
I implemented a continuous integration pipeline using Jenkins, but as final step I want Jenkins to deploy/upload the signed APK file to Google Play Store and AndroidPit. I looked for Jenkins/Hudson plugins but only found two: one for Appaloosa and one for Zubhium.
I have a working developer account both on Google Play and on AndroidPit and can manually upload the APK that Jenkins produces. But my question is: Does anybody know a way to teach Jenkins (e.g. via a shell script?) to upload the APK to the mentioned app stores?
There is a Google Play Android Publisher plugin for Jenkins which uses the Google Play Publishing API, announced at Google I/O 2014.
Google has also released Java and Python libraries to help make use of the API.
For more info on the API, see also:
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2014/07/grow-with-google-play-scaled-publishing.html
I can talk only for Google's Play Store. There is a way, but be warned, it isn't beautiful, you have to code your solution. I am right now writing a Bachelor Thesis to solve this problem - "Continuous Delivery for Android Applications". My solution is mine, this means I don't raise a claim to have the perfect solution, but I can say it is quite working prototype.
I found out the following:
The first Solution is none. Google offers an Play Store API, but it lacks to upload stuff. Seems that they were already thinking about to make such an API, but it only offers In-App billing control
The 2nd solution is to use Apache HttpComponents Library, which lets you implement your own Client for the Google Play Developer Console, but HttpClient lacks a JavaScript Interpreter... Several ways to implement or add one. But of course, not the easiest way.
The 3rd Solution I am working on, is to use Selenium Web Browser Automation Framework. So basically I create PageObjects from those Play Store Pages and dialogues. After that you can create some Factory to maintain "pathes" of controlling these PageObjects.
Using them you have two options as far as I can see, for instance the WebDriver Objects which uses an "invisible" browser process like FF or Chrome and another I use is ChromeDriver which uses a visible Browser process, to perform the User actions. And don't forget to have Exception Handlers, which scans the Webpage for appearing errors, while in use.
There are a lot of pitfalls, due to possible changes in the Design from Google, which lets your Software break. But there are also some ways to handle that. =) And create an XML containing all valueable information about an app, which comes in handy, when continueing to the next step.
You can create a Maven Plugin. This you can load into your Continuous Integration Server. I hope I could help you a bit.
Since Google Play released the upload API, a plugin has been made:
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=73533143
I haven't tried it yet, but looks like it's exactly what we were looking for.
There are other plugins that claim to do the same (thanks #mdt)
https://github.com/DavidHamm/google-play-publisher 404-this page does not exist
https://github.com/orrc/google-play-android-publisher-plugin
I believe it is not included in the PlayStore API currently to reduce stress on the system and to avoid abuse.
I believe we may see this in the gradle plugin and in the IDE in the future.
While we wait for google decide to open up the API, here is a solution, that is so sill, that i just had to propose it:
If you have a GUI, use GUI automation for the last step.
Google Play Android Publisher plugin for Jenkins is a good one. However, it doesn't support uploading descriptions and screenshots (at least for now).
I found decent Gradle plugin, called Gradle Play Publisher. It supports uploading apk, updating Metadata, and uploading screenshots. And it only needs a few steps to setup.
First go to Google Play Console in a browser, open the page for your app, and look for the option to allow a new email address to upload APKs. If it's not there, it probably means you are not the administrator of that Play Store account and you need to ask the person who is the administrator to add it for you (on a per-app basis). To find out what email address to add, go to Google Developer Service Accounts and create a JSON key for any of your existing Google developer service accounts, or create a new service account with a JSON key. Note the email address associated with the service account for which you have created (or will create) the JSON key. It will most likely be something at gserviceaccount.com. This is the email address that must be given permission to upload APKs by someone who has admin access to your Play account.
After that has been done, download Madison Dickson's updated version of Marta Rodriguez's script via wget https://gist.githubusercontent.com/mix3d/665f4ab329b4482297a2f425ebba402c/raw/0949385dd6c80d0701170746b1bd5fd479303412/basic_upload_apks_service_account.py and install dependencies via pip install google-api-python-client (or sudo pip install google-api-python-client as appropriate).
Then in the automated script you can use (for example) python basic_upload_apks_service_account.py -t beta -p org.example.MyApp -s JSON_file_I_made.json -a MyApp.apk (assuming your JSON file, your APK, and basic_upload_apks_service_account.py are all in the current directory and the pip install has been done on that machine or container).
I strongly recommend uploading to beta (hence -t beta in the above) rather than directly to production. Just in case something breaks and it somehow gets as far as the APK upload. I think the final press of "rollout to production" should always be done by a human. But if you really want to do that automatically as well, you can use -t production instead.
I am an Android OS developer. I have a tablet in development that I'm in the process porting Android ICS to. Now I want to install Android Market or Google Play. This system is under development, not distributed and not licenses / approved by Google yet.
I see plenty of Q & A about how to install Android Market on an emulator. I'm pretty sure I can use that same procedure to install Android Market on my development system. But that's not my question exactly.
I have a hunch, and I can see others have speculated as much, that installing (side-loading) Android Market without Google's permission is not legal. My question is, as a developer, how do I apply for or obtain or get approval from Google to download and install Android Market or Google Play on my development system? Believe me, I've searched around the Android development website aplenty.
installing (side-loading) Android Market without Google's permission is not legal
Correct.
how do I apply for or obtain or get approval from Google to download and install Android Market or Google Play on my development system?
Quoting the documentation: "Google Play is only licensed to handset manufacturers shipping devices. For questions about specific cases, contact android-partnerships#google.com".
I am also developing a tablet, got the same form but no response from Google, I'm interested in hearing if you got any.
What is happening right now, I decided to implement Slide Me as the end user app store, it is possible to brand it with your name and icon.
It works well on my test devices so I recommend it if you're just looking for a market application, give it a try.
Though, there are a whole lot more markets (and cheaper one too) out there.