How to get your app's version name from google play store

There are several situations where you may need the current version of your app from google play store to perform certain tasks like comparing it with the app version present in your device and creating an alert dialogue to update the app if the app version is lesser than play store version.

To do this you can use JSOUP library. This library actually provides a very convenient way to parse the HTML and provide you the current version of your app from play store.

To do this first, you need to add the dependency in your app level build.gradle

compile 'org.jsoup:jsoup:1.10.2'

1	compile 'org.jsoup:jsoup:1.10.2'

After adding the dependency you need to create a helper class which will be used whenever you need to get the version name from play store.

public class VersionChecker extends AsyncTask<String, String, String> {

    private String newVersion;

    @Override
    protected String doInBackground(String... params) {

        try {
            newVersion = Jsoup.connect("https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=" + BuildConfig.APPLICATION_ID + "&hl=en")
                    .timeout(30000)
                    .userAgent("Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WindowsNT 5.1; en-US; rv1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6")
                    .referrer("http://www.google.com")
                    .get()
                    .select("div[itemprop=softwareVersion]")
                    .first()
                    .ownText();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return newVersion;
    }
}

public class VersionChecker extends AsyncTask<String, String, String> {

private String newVersion;

@Override

protected String doInBackground(String... params) {

try {

newVersion = Jsoup.connect("https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=" + BuildConfig.APPLICATION_ID + "&hl=en")

.timeout(30000)

.userAgent("Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WindowsNT 5.1; en-US; rv1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6")

.referrer("http://www.google.com")

.get()

.select("div[itemprop=softwareVersion]")

.first()

.ownText();

} catch (IOException e) {

e.printStackTrace();

}

return newVersion;

}

Now you are ready to get the current version of your app and to get that you need to create an object of your VersionChecker class.

VersionChecker versionChecker = new VersionChecker();
try {
     mLatestVersionName = versionChecker.execute().get();
} catch (InterruptedException | ExecutionException e) {
     e.printStackTrace();
}

VersionChecker versionChecker = new VersionChecker();

try {

mLatestVersionName = versionChecker.execute().get();

} catch (InterruptedException | ExecutionException e) {

e.printStackTrace();

}

As you can see in the above code variable mLatestVersionName is initialized by versionChecker.execute().get() which returns a string value which is the version name of your app from google play store.

Now you can compare this version name with your current version of the app in the device and perform the required task. Look at the code segment given below for a little help.

if (Double.parseDouble(BuildConfig.VERSION_NAME) < Double.parseDouble(mLatestVersionName)) {
      //perform your task here like show alert dialogue "Need to upgrade app"
}

if (Double.parseDouble(BuildConfig.VERSION_NAME) < Double.parseDouble(mLatestVersionName)) {

//perform your task here like show alert dialogue "Need to upgrade app"

}

That all.

Thank you very much. This is Vedesh Kumar signing off.

Updated Solution –>

Get Current Version of the Application from the playstore

Vedesh Kumar 9 October 2021

. . .

8 comments

Arpana K.C. Aug 2, 2017 at 11:12 am

It throws error like this:
Could not read resource entities-xhtml.properties. Make sure you copy resources for org.a.c.i

Vedesh Kumar Sep 11, 2017 at 8:40 am
Are you using proguard for shrinking?

You can try :
1) Disabling the proguard.
Or
2) add -keep class org.jsoup.** in you proguard file.

Reply

Shailesh Vishwase Jul 23, 2018 at 12:14 pm

It gives nullPointerExeption on ownText(); please suggest me change.

Mobikul Mobikul Jul 23, 2018 at 12:16 pm
Yes, the recent changes from Google has made this.
You can read our article from here for an update
https://mobikul.com/get-current-version-application-playstore/

Reply

vuanhlevis Jul 18, 2018 at 8:53 am

if version name like 2.3.5 ?
so this line:
Double.parseDouble(BuildConfig.VERSION_NAME) < Double.parseDouble(mLatestVersionName)
get error ??

Vedesh Kumar (Moderator) Jul 20, 2018 at 9:32 am
Definitely, this will give you an error. For this, I actually use version names as 2.35 and it works fine.

Note: I think this method is not working anymore. You can follow our another blog for the update https://mobikul.com/get-current-version-application-playstore/

Reply

kavi Aug 20, 2020 at 5:45 pm

have tried to this code for getting play store version name but have getting null value onl

anchit (Moderator) Oct 9, 2021 at 8:03 pm

check updated solution over here –> https://mobikul.com/get-current-version-application-playstore/

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How to get your app’s version name from google play store

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