I want to know if there is a method or library to use in checking my app's version-number on Google PlayStore? Want to advise users to update to the latest version if their apk's version number is behind
There is no official API at the moment. And using the solutions you find on the web are bad. Most of them involve scraping the Play Store website and will break whenever the Play store re-designs their web page.
Right now I would recommend using Firebase Remote Config. That way you can store in the Firebase server whatever you want the minimum version for your app to be, and them when you want users to update you can increase the value. This lets you control when you need to force an update and is much more flexible, and very easy to update.
Related
I want to see percentage of users that using different versions of my app.
I've tried to look for different sections in app store connect analytics but could not find anything.
you can find the number your app user based on version in :
Trends->Units->Select you app name->Click Version Tabs->Change time filter to Lifetime of whenever you want.
see this screenshot.
The Firebase offers analytics services which provide full tracking for each version of your app your users use, and a compare graphs between them
Does flutter allows us to push live updates without updating the app through play store or app store?
I have a built flutter application and I frequently do to it changes by adding new announcements and pictures. However, when i do these changes they don’t appear on the app that has been already launched on the play store and nothing appears to the users. So what can I do to change this and to make any change I do to directly go live. Other than pushing a new version update everytime as this isn’t reliable at all.
You need to get the data from a backend instead of uploading new assets to the app every time. If you do that you will need to release updates for the app all the time + the app bundle size will be much bigger. It's basically just not how it is supposed to be done.
A backend is something like an online "storage" for your app's data.
If you don't already know how to build APIs you can also use Fireabse which is more beginner-friendly. If you do know python for example you could use Flask or Django. More on backends here
I have a flutter chat app. Companies like Whatsapp & Facebook update their app without forcing users to uninstall or manually uploading the APK again to google play. Is this possible with futter i tried using firebase remote config but it didn't work as i expected ( Changing UI on the go ). Any answer will be appreciated.
WhatsApp and Facebook use React Native with CodePush (if I'm not wrong).
You can't update an app without forcing a user somehow to update the app from a store with Flutter as it compiles to binary and React Native – not
There are multiple things you can do and it is based on what you want to achieve. [From your question your goal is not clear.]
Change Something based on configuration.
If you have configurations defined then you can use Firebase remote config to pass on value to devices and devices should behave according to value that you have set on Firebase Remote config.
Limitation of this approach:
In this approach, don't expect your newly updated code will into existing app. Above approach works, if code is already there in the compiled binary and you just want to switch path.
Binary version update:
If you want to force new app version download then it would require a different approach,
Android: Yes it is possible.
iOS: In-App update is not possible. You can show prompt to user by saying that new version is available and redirect user to new version on Store.
If user has enabled auto-download in iPhone settings then there are chances that app version updated to new version when user come to app.
For implementation look at here: Binary version update
Flutter now has unofficial support for code push using Chimera Flutter Code Push.
Here is a full tutorial
I'm looking for a way to programmatically fetch the alpha/beta version number (as a string) from Google Play, but it's not posted on the /testing/ page for the app in question. Is there some other way to go about this?
It seems the only reliable way to fetch the version numbers for the different tracks is to use the Google Play Developer API. However; this is only possible if you have developer access (which I was able to get in my case).
currently, I used firebase_remote_config to give update message to application.
But I update firebase manual when always release new version. Is that anyway to check google play store app version number with package name?
There is no official API to check your latest version in the play store. You could do a webcall getting the contents of https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=[appid] and find the version somewhere in the HTML. I cannot really recommend it because the HTML might change overtime. I would suggest keeping it the way it is with a variable in remote_config.
There's no official Playstore API to check the version. You'll have to make API yourself. The API will send the latest version number (and build number) and then the mobile app compares it with itself and displays the message in case update is available.
Since you are already using Firebase, there's one more way (without writing any code).
You send push notifications only to those users who are using old app version. See below :
There's no official way to do it using Flutter. But you can write code in platform wise. Above way is for Android.
Official documentation
click here
medium article click tutorial