Bon fortuna!
Google Play doesn't have an API. So I built one.
11–20 of 21 posts
Re: Google Play doesn't have an API. So I built one.
#12Like a BOSS.
How about the Apple Store?
Re: Google Play doesn't have an API. So I built one.
#13I did something like this, but using xpath queries, only problem is when they decide to change these, you will have "fun" times retesting all the dom locations to fix your scraper when the time does come when it breaks.
Re: Google Play doesn't have an API. So I built one.
#14Nice.
Re: Google Play doesn't have an API. So I built one.
#15Like a BOSS. How about the Apple Store?
Look above [1], they already have a JSON output for apps.
Re: Google Play doesn't have an API. So I built one.
#16Oh god parsing HTML pages. Why don't Google Play provide JSON API like iTunes do? http://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=343200656 and alternatively http://itunes.apple.com/lookup?bundleId=com.clickgamer.Angry... The second link can be used in client app to self-checking for new version updates.
There are tons of Android Market website clones. How do they get their data?
Re: Google Play doesn't have an API. So I built one.
#17Oh god parsing HTML pages. Why don't Google Play provide JSON API like iTunes do? http://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=343200656 and alternatively http://itunes.apple.com/lookup?bundleId=com.clickgamer.Angry... The second link can be used in client app to self-checking for new version updates.
There are tons of Android Market website clones. How do they get their data?
apps are likely to be published on G Play first, then to 3rd party markets.
If an app is exclusively published on 3rd pary market, then it's likely distributed directly through apk , there's no way to identify them using a centralized way.
Re: Google Play doesn't have an API. So I built one.
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are tons of Android Market website clones. How do they get their data?
apps are likely to be published on G Play first, then to 3rd party markets. If an app is exclusively published on 3rd pary market, then it's likely distributed directly through apk , there's no way to identify them using a centralized way.
> then it's likely distributed directly through apk , there's no way to identify them using a centralized way.
You can identify them via md5 hash of the apk, the "versionName" attribute and the "versionCode" attribute.
Re: Google Play doesn't have an API. So I built one.
#19I did something like this, but using xpath queries, only problem is when they decide to change these, you will have "fun" times retesting all the dom locations to fix your scraper when the time does come when it breaks.
> I did something like this, but using xpath queries, only problem is when they decide to change these
That's a strong reason for going with a library that is used by multiple users (more people to distribute the workload over). But more realistically, you can just use the existing API endpoints because there are client apps in the wild that rely on those APIs working the same way-- at least until Google sunsets Google Play.
Re: Google Play doesn't have an API. So I built one.
#20I did something like this, but using xpath queries, only problem is when they decide to change these, you will have "fun" times retesting all the dom locations to fix your scraper when the time does come when it breaks.
> I did something like this, but using xpath queries, only problem is when they decide to change these That's a strong reason for going with a library that is used by multiple users (more people to distribute the workload over). But more realistically, you can just use the existing API endpoints because there are client apps in the wild that rely on those APIs working the same way-- at least until Google sunsets Goog…
there was an API which i found a while back, but it didn't work at all, all the unit tests it had failed, so my guess was that google changed their api once again and the project was worthless. The solution i came up with was the only reliable one i could build. It was only like 6 lines of code.