query the google play store for the version of an app?

Asked 23/1, 2013 at 0:17 Answered 1/4, 2016 at 15:11

is there a way to query the play store for the version of an app without the need for user-credentials. I am aware of this unofficial API:

http://code.google.com/p/android-market-api/

but I don't want to rely on user credentials - I can visit the google play sites in incognito mode via chrome also - so it must be possible somehow. But I found no way and I don't want to fallback on scraping ;-)

Indeterminate answered 23/1, 2013 at 0:17 Comment(1)

Possible duplicate of Checking my app version programmatically in Android market – Easterling 23/4, 2016 at 12:18

Found a suitable API via G+: this is the API: https://androidquery.appspot.com

example call: https://androidquery.appspot.com/api/market?app=org.ligi.fast

and this wrapper/code: https://github.com/androidquery/androidquery

Indeterminate answered 24/1, 2013 at 22:36 Comment(8)

this api is hosted on google app engine which may outage when daily free quota used up. – Hydrolysate 12/6, 2013 at 3:49

@Indeterminate can you explain how does the example work i mean which api its uses?? – Tresa 12/8, 2013 at 9:24

Can i use this androidquery.appspot.com/api/market?app=org.ligi.fast link. Is it reliable for future use?? – Babysit 17/7, 2014 at 15:2

Nice. Now if it would just return more meta information, like an icon, average rating, etc. – Biamonte 18/4, 2015 at 14:42

This api is stop working after few request, it is not reliable. – Subantarctic 8/9, 2015 at 5:46

@Subantarctic Yea - they get over quota now sometimes - might not have been such a wise idea to advertise it here ;-) – Indeterminate 8/9, 2015 at 11:30

Traffic is so high that I get very few requests with any positive return. – Bremsstrahlung 10/12, 2015 at 22:40

This service is dead, 2017 – Handmaiden 23/5, 2017 at 13:41

Also check out: www.playstoreapi.com

It's unofficial but easy to use (free for non commercial use). you can get data about apps, search the play store and get top charts data. from their documentation section:

Node.js:

var request     = require('request');
var apiKey      = 'wij5czxu3mxkzkt9'; // your API key
var packageName = 'com.whatsapp';     // package Name, e.g. com.whatsapp for WhatsApp

var url = 'http://api.playstoreapi.com/v1.1/apps/' + packageName + '?key=' + apiKey;

request({
    url: url,
    json: true
    }, function (error, response, body) {
    if (!error && response.statusCode === 200) {
        console.log(body) // Print the json response
    }
});

HTML/JS:

<html>
<head>
<body>
<p></p>
<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.0/jquery.min.js"></script>

  <script>

  var apiKey = 'wij5czxu3mxkzkt9'; // your API key
  var app    = 'com.whatsapp';     // package com.whatsapp for WhatsApp

  var url = 'http://api.playstoreapi.com/v1.1/apps/' + app + '?key=' + apiKey;

  $.getJSON(url).done(function(appDetails) {
    $('p:last').html(JSON.stringify(appDetails));
  });

  </script>
</body>
</head>
<html>

Python:

import urllib2
import json

packageName = 'com.whatsapp'      # package com.whatsapp for WhatsApp
apiKey      = 'wij5czxu3mxkzkt9'  # your API key

url = 'http://api.playstoreapi.com/v1.1/apps/{0}?key={1}'

response = urllib2.urlopen(url.format(packageName, apiKey))

data = json.load(response)   
print data

C# .NET:

string apiKey = "wij5czxu3mxkzkt9"; // your API key
string app    = "com.whatsapp";     // package com.whatsapp for WhatsApp

string url = "http://api.playstoreapi.com/v1.1/apps/{0}?key={1}";

using (var webClient = new System.Net.WebClient()) {
    string jsonString = webClient.DownloadString(string.Format(url, app, apiKey));
}

Gimel answered 17/4, 2014 at 6:45 Comment(2)

www.playstoreapi.com is not available anymore and maybe if someone still needs to use then he can give a try to github.com/thetutlage/Google-Play-Store-API – Lumpish 15/6, 2015 at 8:27

From where you got the appkey? – Boric 7/11, 2017 at 18:41

Bear in mind that nowadays a lot of apps have multiple versions running. For those apps with one version you can try 42matters Lookup API, it should give you the correct version.

Margoriemargot answered 1/4, 2016 at 15:11 Comment(2)

Interesting but really expensive – Indeterminate 1/4, 2016 at 15:46

It is a paid api and it is not cheap. I would use jsoup instead: #25201849 – Sapota 30/6, 2016 at 11:55

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