What API is used by Google+ Android app?

Question

There is a Google+ mobile application for Android. To receive all the information it must be using some API.

How I can retrieve this information from my phone and see from where this app is getting data? I'd love to access it myself and see how it works.

Answer 1

The API hasn't been released yet. Heck, the product hasn't even been released yet. Thats like developing a video game for playstation 5.

Answer 2

They haven't launched the API yet. If there is something you want to build on Google+, they encourage you to signup here: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/plusdevelopers/

Answer 3

Yes it is. Its coming "soon" read :: http://www.webpronews.com/api-coming-soon-for-google-plus-2011-07

Answer 4

You are talking about "reverse engineering" a network protocol.

Full sniffing

• Get a market enabled emulator: How to install Android Market App on the emulator?
• Get a network sniffer: tcpdump, wireshark, ...
• Start to sniff what's going over the wire
• http://www.thoughtcrime.org/software/sslstrip/ - an ssl stripping proxy
• Inject your ca: http://www.mcbsys.com/techblog/2010/12/android-certificates/

This should, in theory, enable you to sniff any https or plain text connection.

Already available APIs

I would not try to hijack the connection. There is already a contacts API, it's called xmpp. You should be able to use the talk integration to pull your friend list.

Future APIs

You may also want to sign up for the upcoming API.

UPDATE

It appears that the Android client uses (at least partially) XMPP. The regular client requires an open XMPP connection and you can see a "RealTimeChat" in your logcat. It looks like the connection is encrypted because you get a "TLS required" message (the client seems to go through the XMPP connection states). I'm not sure if that's used for client based posts or just for server push. You can see the open connections with the help of "netstat". The connection goes away when google plus terminates.

I'd thus expect the API to be really open once released (or rev.eng).

UPDATE 2 (06. Jul. 2011)

Hangout is build on XMPP/MUC+JINGLE (muc == multiuser chat, jingle is roughly a SIP alternative on top of XMPP). And yes, they'll release the the details of it :-)

UPDATE 3 (06. Jul. 2011)

Multiple XMPP components for gtalk/gplus have been revealed by reading the JS code. It also emphasizes that they have build a great deal of features on XMPP.