I've noticed lately that some app recommender programs seem to get data off the android market. I'm wondering how I could retrieve information, such as screen shots, description, developer, number of downloads, rating, etc...
I've done many searches and I haven't found any solutions. It would be nice to be able to use that info to be able to see a rating for an app inside an app chooser, for example. Or perhaps be able to track changes and rating over time and version history, etc...
Is there an API to access that information? Is there a way to parse the data from a website? Or is there a complicated hack involved? Any information is appreciated...
There is an API currently hosted on Google Code. I've made use of it in one of my own apps and I think it works quite well. You are able to access everything that is visible in the market including comments and screenshots.
http://code.google.com/p/android-market-api/
Is there an API to access that
information?
Not a publicly supported one offered by Google, sorry.
Related
I would like to display in a custom dashboard for a particular Android app the total number of download . Are there APIs that give me that value?
AFAIK the only api that is available is this one, and it's only for editing/publishing your own apps' details.
If you want to get information on other apps I suggest you look into scraping the play store. The play store has some pretty standard (read: straightforward) url patterns to help you find the apps you want. If you have the apps package you can find the app straight away: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.smithyproductions.infinitracks. There're similar patterns for search terms and finding apps by a particular developer too.
There is no official Play Store API that would allow you access to this information. There are a few 3rd party APIs, but these are somewhat unreliable, and un-official (so could go away at any time).
Bottom line, it is NOT possible to get download information from an official API at this time.
Currently, I'm looking to see if there is a way to sync the information we've obtained through an online site with the information we use on a phone application.
All I need to know is that the user that visited our site is the same user that is using our phone application, No stats and preferably no one needs to enter a thing.
You won't get that from Apple, because of their history with privacy concerns, but you could do something like generate an identifying number in your app, that your web site asks for, that would tie the two together. Of course, you'd have to make allowances if your app is deleted from the device, then re-installed, to either make sure you're generating the same number, or other such solution as befits your requirements.
The first thing that would come to my mind is Google Analytics, available for different platforms and services (i.e. Youtube, etc). You would have to go through Google Analytics API to figure out a way on how to track a particular customer visit across several location/platforms.
See Hello Analytics example of Google Analytics API
See Data Feed API
Ok, so far I've answered my own question for androids. Apparently you can pass a referrer param through google play which actually allows your app to receive the parameter and they even have an app that test this functionality.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.stevemiller.android.referrertest
now I have yet to test this, nor is it a possible solution for iOS.
I want to get the details of one of my Android apps from the Google Developer Console (i.e. the number of installs, and current rating).
I preferably want to do this using Python. I'd prefer not to go down the screen scraping/Beautiful Soup route, so I've been searching for a relevant API. I haven't managed to find one.
My questions are thus:
Does such a Python-based Google API exist (and if so, what/where is it)?
If not, are there any other Python-based libraries I could use?
If not, what would people recommend as a non-Python alternative?
Try out Google dev scraper:
https://github.com/tmurakam/googleplay_dev_scraper
I'm using it and it works really great! You can get the number of downloads of a specific app, ratings and other statistics that you want. Try it out, you will not be sorry!
I was in search of an API which would help me get the details pertaining to different applications from playstore. After much googling and going through many solutions already given at SO, I decided to go for Android Market API though this API has few drawbacks.
I am mainly focusing on getting the reviews pertaining to an application - the major drawback here while I use this API is that, I do not get the reviewer name, app version, device and many more valuable information I need.
I have made enough of research to find any alternate methods are there to fetch this information, but to no avail.
During the research, Appmonsta api came to my notice, which claim to provide almost all the details available in the playstore, including username, device, app version etc.
I am sure they would not be maintaining a database which would not be a practical solution, as the market information is prone to change every second. And I am also quite sure, google would not be providing any update to them alone.
Since I am in need of such an API, I am curious to know, what would be the mechanism/technique they use or one should use, such that the whole playstore information is available to them alone - atleast the complete details pertaining to a review.
Any help, comments, guidance in this regard is much appreciated.
There's no official API so whatever you use you shall expect problems - if not today then maybe tomorrow, when Google change a thing in the store. But anyway, you may take a look at the Andlytics sources: https://github.com/AndlyticsProject/andlytics - maybe it'd suffice for your needs
I am sure they would not be maintaining a database which would not be a practical solution, as the market information is prone to change every second.
If I were writing such a web API, I would in fact maintain a database and use it as a cache. New hits for a particular app page would potentially refresh the cache. The information would be obtained by scraping the web page.
The WhereDat API searches the Android Play Store. It lets you find apps, using full-string search queries. It also supports auto-complete use-cases by using prefix-string search. The lookup API lets you get data about apps using their package as the key.
I released and Android app, and I want to be able to collect comments in some sort of programmatic fashon. I've looked around the the web and can't seem to find any Google API or any 3rd party service. Does anyone have any suggestions or know something I don't?
I was thinking about writing some sort of HTML scraper to just extract them from the developer console, but I wanted to get some feedback before I start that little adventure.
Thanks
You can use the unofficial Android Market API (It is still called like that).
It scrapes the content from the play store, so you can do all kind of things with it:
E.g. get the description, app logo, comments etc.