Getting versionCode and VersionName from Google Play

Question

I am looking for a way how to get app versionCode and VersionName from google play with package name via java app in PC. I have seen: https://androidquery.appspot.com/ but it not working anymore and also https://code.google.com/archive/p/android-market-api/ started to making problems and also stopped working, and it requer device ID. Can you help me with some simple solution or API for this? Very important, i need versionCode and VersionName and VersionName is relatively easy to get by parsing html google play app site. The versionCode is very important.

Answer 1

There is no official Google Play API, Playstore uses an internal protobuf API which is not documented and not open. IMHO, you could :

• use an open source library that reverse engineer the API
• scrap apk download sites that have already extracted this information (most likely via the same protobuf Google Play API)

Note that there is a Google Play developer API but you can't list your apks, versions, apps. It's essentially used to manage the app distribution, reviews, edits etc..

Google play internal API

play-store-api Java library

This library uses Google Play Store protobuf API (undocumented and closed API) and requires an email/password to generate a token that can be reused to play with the API :

GplaySearch googlePlayInstance = new GplaySearch();

DetailsResponse response = googlePlayInstance.getDetailResponse("[email protected]",
        "password", "com.facebook.katana");

AppDetails appDetails = response.getDocV2().getDetails().getAppDetails();

System.out.println("version name : " + appDetails.getVersionString());
System.out.println("version code : " + appDetails.getVersionCode());

with this method :

public DetailsResponse getDetailResponse(String email,
                                         String password,
                                         String packageName) throws IOException, ApiBuilderException {
    // A device definition is required to log in
    // See resources for a list of available devices
    Properties properties = new Properties();
    try {
        properties.load(getClass().getClassLoader().getSystemResourceAsStream("device-honami" +
                ".properties"));
    } catch (IOException e) {
        System.out.println("device-honami.properties not found");
        return null;
    }
    PropertiesDeviceInfoProvider deviceInfoProvider = new PropertiesDeviceInfoProvider();
    deviceInfoProvider.setProperties(properties);
    deviceInfoProvider.setLocaleString(Locale.ENGLISH.toString());

    // Provide valid google account info
    PlayStoreApiBuilder builder = new PlayStoreApiBuilder()
            .setDeviceInfoProvider(deviceInfoProvider)
            .setHttpClient(new OkHttpClientAdapter())
            .setEmail(email)
            .setPassword(password);
    GooglePlayAPI api = builder.build();

    // We are logged in now
    // Save and reuse the generated auth token and gsf id,
    // unless you want to get banned for frequent relogins
    api.getToken();
    api.getGsfId();

    // API wrapper instance is ready
    return api.details(packageName);
}

device-honami.properties is device property file that is required to identify device characteristics. You have some device.properties file sample here

The OkHttpClientAdapter can be found here

Dependencies used to run this example :

allprojects {
    repositories {
        ...
        maven { url 'https://jitpack.io' }
    }
}
dependencies {
    compile 'com.github.yeriomin:play-store-api:0.19'
    compile 'com.squareup.okhttp3:okhttp:3.8.1'
}

Scrap third part apk download sites

http://apk-dl.com

You could get the version name & version code from http://apk-dl.com (of course unofficial) by scraping the page with jsoup for the required package name :

String packageName = "com.facebook.katana";

Document doc = Jsoup.connect("http://apk-dl.com/" + packageName).get();
Elements data = doc.select(".file-list .mdl-menu__item");

if (data.size() > 0) {
    System.out.println("full text : " + data.get(0).text());
    Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(.*)\\s+\\((\\d+)\\)");
    Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(data.get(0).text());
    if (matcher.find()) {
        System.out.println("version name : " + matcher.group(1));
        System.out.println("version code : " + matcher.group(2));
    }
}

https://apkpure.com

Another possibility is scrapping https://apkpure.com :

String packageName = "com.facebook.katana";

Elements data = Jsoup.connect("https://apkpure.com/search?q=" + packageName)
        .userAgent("Mozilla")
        .get().select(".search-dl .search-title a");

if (data.size() > 0) {

    Elements data2 = Jsoup.connect("https://apkpure.com" + data.attr("href"))
            .userAgent("Mozilla")
            .get().select(".faq_cat dd p");

    if (data2.size() > 0) {
        System.out.println(data2.get(0).text());

        Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("Version:\\s+(.*)\\s+\\((\\d+)\\)");
        Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(data2.get(0).text());
        if (matcher.find()) {
            System.out.println("version name : " + matcher.group(1));
            System.out.println("version code : " + matcher.group(2));
        }
    }
}

https://api-apk.evozi.com

Also, https://api-apk.evozi.com has an internal JSON api but :

• sometimes it doesn't work (return Ops, APK Downloader got access denied when trying to download) mostly for non popular app
• it has mechanism in place against scraping bot (random token generated in JS with a random variable name)

The following is returning the version name and code with https://api-apk.evozi.com FWIW :

String packageName = "com.facebook.katana";

String data = Jsoup.connect("https://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader")
        .userAgent("Mozilla")
        .execute().body();

String token = "";
String time = "";

Pattern varPattern = Pattern.compile("dedbadfbadc:\\s+(\\w+),");
Pattern timePattern = Pattern.compile("t:\\s+(\\w+),");

Matcher varMatch = varPattern.matcher(data);
Matcher timeMatch = timePattern.matcher(data);

if (varMatch.find()) {
    Pattern tokenPattern = Pattern.compile("\\s*var\\s*" + varMatch.group(1) + "\\s*=\\s*'(.*)'.*");
    Matcher tokenMatch = tokenPattern.matcher(data);

    if (tokenMatch.find()) {
        token = tokenMatch.group(1);
    }
}

if (timeMatch.find()) {
    time = timeMatch.group(1);
}

HttpClient httpclient = HttpClients.createDefault();
HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("https://api-apk.evozi.com/download");

List<NameValuePair> params = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>();
params.add(new BasicNameValuePair("t", time));
params.add(new BasicNameValuePair("afedcfdcbdedcafe", packageName));
params.add(new BasicNameValuePair("dedbadfbadc", token));
params.add(new BasicNameValuePair("fetch", "false"));
httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(params, "UTF-8"));

HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);

JsonElement element = new JsonParser().parse(EntityUtils.toString(response.getEntity()));
JsonObject result = element.getAsJsonObject();

if (result.has("version") && result.has("version_code")) {
    System.out.println("version name : " + result.get("version").getAsString());
    System.out.println("version code : " + result.get("version_code").getAsInt());
} else {
    System.out.println(result);
}

Implementation

You could implement it on a backend of yours that communicates directly with your Java application, this way you could maintain the process of retrieving version code/name if one of the above method fails.

If you are only interested in your own apps, a cleaner solution would be :

• to set up a backend which will store all your current app version name / version code
• all developer/publisher in your company could share a publish task (gradle task) which will use the Google Play developer API to publish apk and that gradle task would include a call to your backend to store the version code / version name entry when the app is published. The main goal would be to automate the whole publication with storage of the app metadata on your side.