API Not Working.

[iturki]

The API is not working. I tested it on WAMP with Apache 2.2.11 and PHP 5.3.0. Curl is enabled and I think mb_eregi is supported in PHP5.

Any one have the same issue or is it just me?

[iturki]

Since this API parse the Play Store pages, I think it parses the wrong elements.

[thetutlage]

Any specific errors or it's just not displaying anything ?

[iturki]

There is no error thrown. It displays nothing. Take this for example:

<?php
include_once('source/core/playStoreApi.php'); // including class file
$class_init = new PlayStoreApi;       
$topPaidApps = $class_init->topPaidApps();

if($topPaidApps !== 0){
    echo "Success!";
    print_r($topPaidApps);
}
else
    echo "Fail!";
?>

This will echo "Success!" with nothing else.

[sebamoreno]

Hello, api does not me, then google play actulizacion. Download the latest version with updated source code and does not work

[rashmirathi]

Hi,
Thanks for creating a great API.

The API was working fine a few days back, however, now that Google has changed the Play interface we all are facing the issues. I confirmed this by debugging to a certain level.

Do you plan to update the API in coming days to align it according to the modified Google Play site.
Do let me know if I can be of any help.

Thanks again

[thetutlage]

API scrap the web pages to find the list applications , since Google has changed their page elements and in cooperated new design, code is not able to find elements.

I will be working on version 2 for this API , which will be released soon

[p30rayan]

soon??? we waiting ..... please realease it soon

[rashmirathi]

@p30rayan -
I have spent many sleepless nights trying to change the API myself. The way Google has changed the design, it is very difficult (not impossible) to modify the existing API. And I assume it to be a complete from-scratch development effort.

Having said that, as I had to deliver a project with proper crawling - I divided this task into two steps

1. Collection of App IDs - completed that with help of Selenium (http://docs.seleniumhq.org/)
2. Fetching details of individual apps - Wrote a PHP script for this using cURL & DOM Parser.

Hope this helps

[MishkaS]

Hello rashmirathi,

Could you please share more details about your approach. Probably it also could be wrapped into some kind of new APIs.

Thanks.

[rashmirathi]

Dear Mishka,
Sorry for delayed reply - I was travelling.

I've basically created a script using Selenium and PHP which opens up a browser window (firefox in my case), traverse through the category page for Google Play till there are no more Apps left for loading. The script has to (with the help of Selenium) trigger the window-scroll and button-click events on the browser so all of the apps get loaded in the page.
At the end, the script dumps all the AppIDs it could find in the particular page (https://play.google.com/store/apps/category/ARCADE/collection/topselling_paid or https://play.google.com/store/apps/category/ARCADE/collection/topselling_free or any of the individual category page).

Once I've the App IDs I need, I run another script which opens up the respective URL of each App ID and fetch the data for a particular App.

The only problem I see is the need of a browser and can't be run on a webserver where we don't have a GUI or browser (that's based on my understanding).

Please let me know if that helps.

Many thanks

[MishkaS]

Hello rashmirathi,

Thank you for the feedback! I will try to go the steps you described. Hopefully I will get desired results :)

[rashmirathi]

Good luck buddy
Do let me know if I can contribute.
:-)

[duchu]

Any news or updates ?

[rashmirathi]

@duchu
Please check alternate approaches defined above and see if they can fit in your requirement.

[duchu]

Still nothing in my case ;/
http://duchu.vot.pl/googleplay/