How to allow users to check for the latest app ver

Question

I want to add a "Check for update" button in apps so that when someone clicks it, it will display a toast message / progress dialog for checking the app's version.

If new version is found the apps will auto download it to the phone and let user to manually install the updated apps.

Or any others method will do as long as it can check for latest version and notify the user to update.

Answer 1

Navigate to your play page:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yourpackage

Using a standard HTTP GET. Now the following jQuery finds important info for you:

Current Version

$("[itemprop='softwareVersion']").text()

What's new

$(".recent-change").each(function() { all += $(this).text() + "\n"; })

Now that you can extract these information manually, simply make a method in your app that executes this for you.

public static String[] getAppVersionInfo(String playUrl) {
    HtmlCleaner cleaner = new HtmlCleaner();
    CleanerProperties props = cleaner.getProperties();
    props.setAllowHtmlInsideAttributes(true);
    props.setAllowMultiWordAttributes(true);
    props.setRecognizeUnicodeChars(true);
    props.setOmitComments(true);
    try {
        URL url = new URL(playUrl);
        URLConnection conn = url.openConnection();
        TagNode node = cleaner.clean(new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream()));
        Object[] new_nodes = node.evaluateXPath("//*[@class='recent-change']");
        Object[] version_nodes = node.evaluateXPath("//*[@itemprop='softwareVersion']");

        String version = "", whatsNew = "";
        for (Object new_node : new_nodes) {
            TagNode info_node = (TagNode) new_node;
            whatsNew += info_node.getAllChildren().get(0).toString().trim()
                    + "\n";
        }
        if (version_nodes.length > 0) {
            TagNode ver = (TagNode) version_nodes[0];
            version = ver.getAllChildren().get(0).toString().trim();
        }
        return new String[]{version, whatsNew};
    } catch (IOException | XPatherException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        return null;
    }
}

Uses HtmlCleaner

Answer 2

To save time writing for check new version update for android app, I written it as library and open source at https://github.com/winsontan520/Android-WVersionManager

Answer 3

There is no API for this, and you can't auto install it, you can just redirect them to it's Market page so they can upgrade. You can have your latest version in a file on a Web server, and have the app check it. Here's one implementation of this:

http://code.google.com/p/openintents/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2FUpdateCheckerApp

Answer 4

You can use this Android Library: https://github.com/danielemaddaluno/Android-Update-Checker. It aims to provide a reusable instrument to check asynchronously if exists any newer released update of your app on the Store. It is based on the use of Jsoup (http://jsoup.org/) to test if a new update really exists parsing the app page on the Google Play Store:

private boolean web_update(){
    try {       
        String curVersion = applicationContext.getPackageManager().getPackageInfo(package_name, 0).versionName; 
        String newVersion = curVersion;
        newVersion = Jsoup.connect("https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=" + package_name + "&hl=en")
                .timeout(30000)
                .userAgent("Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WindowsNT 5.1; en-US; rv1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6")
                .referrer("http://www.google.com")
                .get()
                .select("div[itemprop=softwareVersion]")
                .first()
                .ownText();
        return (value(curVersion) < value(newVersion)) ? true : false;
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        return false;
    }
}

And as "value" function the following (works if values are beetween 0-99):

private long value(String string) {
    string = string.trim();
    if( string.contains( "." )){ 
        final int index = string.lastIndexOf( "." );
        return value( string.substring( 0, index ))* 100 + value( string.substring( index + 1 )); 
    }
    else {
        return Long.valueOf( string ); 
    }
}

If you want only to verify a mismatch beetween versions, you can change:

value(curVersion) < value(newVersion) with value(curVersion) != value(newVersion)

Answer 5

Google updated play store two months before. This is the solution working right now for me..

class GetVersionCode extends AsyncTask<Void, String, String> {

    @Override

    protected String doInBackground(Void... voids) {

        String newVersion = null;

        try {
            Document document = Jsoup.connect("https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=" + MainActivity.this.getPackageName()  + "&hl=en")
                    .timeout(30000)
                    .userAgent("Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WindowsNT 5.1; en-US; rv1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6")
                    .referrer("http://www.google.com")
                    .get();
            if (document != null) {
                Elements element = document.getElementsContainingOwnText("Current Version");
                for (Element ele : element) {
                    if (ele.siblingElements() != null) {
                        Elements sibElemets = ele.siblingElements();
                        for (Element sibElemet : sibElemets) {
                            newVersion = sibElemet.text();
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return newVersion;

    }


    @Override

    protected void onPostExecute(String onlineVersion) {

        super.onPostExecute(onlineVersion);

        if (onlineVersion != null && !onlineVersion.isEmpty()) {

            if (Float.valueOf(currentVersion) < Float.valueOf(onlineVersion)) {
                //show anything
            }

        }

        Log.d("update", "Current version " + currentVersion + "playstore version " + onlineVersion);

    }
}

and don't forget to add JSoup library

dependencies {
compile 'org.jsoup:jsoup:1.8.3'}

and on Oncreate()

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);


    String currentVersion;
    try {
        currentVersion = getPackageManager().getPackageInfo(getPackageName(), 0).versionName;
    } catch (PackageManager.NameNotFoundException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    new GetVersionCode().execute();

}

that's it.. Thanks to this link

Answer 6

add compile 'org.jsoup:jsoup:1.10.2' to dependencies in APP LEVEL build.gradle

&

Just add below code and you are good to go.

private class GetVersionCode extends AsyncTask<Void, String, String> {
    @Override
    protected String doInBackground(Void... voids) {

        try {
            newVersion = Jsoup.connect("https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=" + SplashActivity.this.getPackageName() + "&hl=it")
                    .timeout(30000)
                    .userAgent("Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WindowsNT 5.1; en-US; rv1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6")
                    .referrer("http://www.google.com")
                    .get()
                    .select("div[itemprop=softwareVersion]")
                    .first()
                    .ownText();
            return newVersion;
        } catch (Exception e) {
            return newVersion;
        }
    }

    @Override
    protected void onPostExecute(String onlineVersion) {
        super.onPostExecute(onlineVersion);

        if (!currentVersion.equalsIgnoreCase(onlineVersion)) {
            //show dialog
            new AlertDialog.Builder(context)
                    .setTitle("Updated app available!")
                    .setMessage("Want to update app?")
                    .setPositiveButton("Update", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
                        public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
                            // continue with delete
                            final String appPackageName = getPackageName(); // getPackageName() from Context or Activity object
                            try {
                                Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "App is in BETA version cannot update", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
                                startActivity(new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse("market://details?id=" + appPackageName)));
                            } catch (ActivityNotFoundException anfe) {
                                startActivity(new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse("https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=" + appPackageName)));
                            }
                        }
                    })
                    .setNegativeButton("Later", new DialogInterface.OnClickListener() {
                        public void onClick(DialogInterface dialog, int which) {
                            // do nothing
                            dialog.dismiss();
                            new MyAsyncTask().execute();
                        }
                    })
                    .setIcon(android.R.drawable.ic_dialog_alert)
                    .show();

        }
    }
}