Finding a list of all the android apps on the market

Question

is there a way of getting access to the details of each one programatically?

Answer 1

There is an open source project called Android Market API which allows you to do the following:

• You can browse market with any carrier or locale you want.
• Search for apps using keywords or package name.
• Retrieve an app info using an app ID.
• Retrieve comments using an app ID.
• Get PNG screenshots and icon

It is located here: http://code.google.com/p/android-market-api/

Hope this helps you out. =)

Answer 2

Unfortunately there is still no official API for Google Play Store (previously known as Android Market) to access Android apps' meta-data (or any other stats).

As mentioned in other answers, you could develop your own web crawler, parse the HTML page and extract the app meta-data you need (e.g. title, descriptions, price, etc). This topic has been covered in this other question.

Another option is to use an open-source library based on ProtoBuf to fetch meta-data about an app, here the link to the project: https://code.google.com/archive/p/android-market-api. This library fetches app meta-data from Google Play on behalf of a valid Google account, but you still need a crawler to "find" which apps are available and schedule their meta-data retrieval. This other open-source project can help you with that: https://code.google.com/archive/p/android-marketplace-crawler.

If you don't want to implement all that by yourself, you could use a third-party service to access Android apps meta-data through a JSON-based API. For instance, 42matters.com (the company I work for) offers an API for both Android and iOS to retrieve apps' meta-data, here more details:

https://42matters.com/app-market-data

In order to get the Title, Icon, Description, Downloads for an app you can use the "lookup" endpoint as documented here:

https://42matters.com/docs/app-market-data/android/apps/lookup

This is an example of the JSON response for the "Angry Birds Space Premium" app:

{
    "package_name": "com.rovio.angrybirdsspace.premium",
    "title": "Angry Birds Space Premium",
    "description": "Play over 300 interstellar levels across 10 planets...",
    "short_desc": "The #1 mobile game of all time blasts off into space!",
    "rating": 4.3046236038208,
    "category": "Arcade",
    "cat_key": "GAME_ARCADE",
    "cat_keys": [
        "GAME_ARCADE",
        "GAME",
        "FAMILY_EDUCATION",
        "FAMILY"
    ],
    "price": "$1.15",
    "downloads": "1,000,000 - 5,000,000",
    "version": "2.2.1",
    "content_rating": "Everyone",
    "promo_video": "https://www.youtube.com/embed/g6AL9YqRHaI?ps=play&vq=large&rel=0&autohide=1&showinfo=0&autoplay=1",
    "market_update": "2015-07-03T00:00:00+00:00",
    "screenshots": [
        "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ZmuBQzIy1G74coPrQ1R7fCeKdJmjTdpJhNrIHBOaFyM0N2EYdUPwZaQjnQUtiUDGmac=h310",
        "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Xg2Aq70ZH0SnNhtSKH7xg9jCfisWgmmq3C7xQbx6YMhTVAIRqlRJeH8GYtjxapb_qR4=h310",
        "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/T4o5-2_UP82sj4fSSegbjrGmslNHlfvtEYuZacXMSOC55-7eyiKySw05lNF1QQGO2FeU=h310",
        "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/f2ennaLdivFu5cQQaVPKsRcWxB8FS5T4Bkoy3l0iPW9-GDDnTVRhvR5kz6l4m8FL1c8=h310",
        "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/H-9M03_-O9Df1nHr2-rUdjtk2aeBY3bAxnqSX3m2zh_aV8-K1t0qU1DxLXnK0GrDAw=h310"
    ],
    "created": "2012-03-22T08:24:00+00:00",
    "developer": "Rovio Entertainment Ltd.",
    "number_ratings": 20812,
    "price_currency": "$",
    "icon": "https://lh3.ggpht.com/aQaIEGrmba1ENSEgUtArdm3yhJUug7BRWlu_WaspoJusZyHv1rjlWtYqe_qRjE_Kmh1E=w300",
    "icon_72": "https://lh3.ggpht.com/aQaIEGrmba1ENSEgUtArdm3yhJUug7BRWlu_WaspoJusZyHv1rjlWtYqe_qRjE_Kmh1E=w72",
    "market_url": "https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rovio.angrybirdsspace.premium&referrer=utm_source%3D42matters.com%26utm_medium%3Dapi"
}

Alternatively, we also have a DATA FEED DUMP to access all mobile app data at once: https://42matters.com/docs/app-market-data/file-dump/android-app-details (on this page you can also find a free sample of data for your tests).

I hope this helps, otherwise feel free to get in touch with me. I know this topic quite well and can point you in the right direction.

Regards,

Andrea

Answer 3

You could build a website crawler and crawl the various android app stores and get all the data for the apps.

Not all apps are on the Google Android Market. There are other Android stores like:

• Appbrain
• Applanet
• AndAppStore
• AppstoreHQ
• etc...

Not all App Stores have APIs so the best way to do it is by crawling their website.

Answer 4

As a workaround, you can use appbrain api. It has RSS feeds for lists of apps with description of each one.

Link is in here: http://www.appbrain.com/info/api