Parse versionCode from android apk files

Question

I know .apk files are .zip files, but AndroidManifest.xml looks binary and certainly grep or hex editors haven\'t been successful extracting the versionCode.

Does anybod

Answer 1

You may refer to this. It reads necessary strings from the resource table while translating the binary xml file.

Answer 2

they are binary XML files. You can use a tool like AXML2XML to convert the binary XML file into a text-based XML file. There a few different tools, some do better jobs than others.

AXML2XML: http://devtcg.blogspot.com/2008/03/tool-to-read-android-binary-xml-files.html

AXMLPrtiner: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=514412

Answer 3

Use android-apktool:

apktool.bat d application.apk

Answer 4

Assuming you have the Android SDK installed, you can use aapt to find this value. For example, on Linux:

aapt dump badging MyAwesomeApplication.apk |grep version