README.md

Google Play Proxy

A simple Python Flask REST server to proxy calls to the Google Play Store.

Usage

The API is implemented using googleplay-api and supports these environment variables:

• GOOGLE_USERNAME: a valid Google username
• GOOGLE_PASSWORD: password for the same Google account
• ANDROID_ID: a valid Google Service Framework (GSF) ID
  You can find it using the Device ID app for example
• MAX_LOGIN_RETRIES: the maximum number of retries when login fails
  Login can be quite flaky

To get a reference to the ApiClient class use something like:

api = ApiClient(android_id=os.environ.get('ANDROID_ID'),
                username=os.environ.get('GOOGLE_USERNAME'),
                password=os.environ.get('GOOGLE_PASSWORD'),
                max_login_retries=int(os.environ.get('MAX_LOGIN_RETRIES', '10')))

The api.ApiClient class wraps remote calls with the following methods:

• login(): Executes the login (with retries) and caches the authentication token for following calls.
• search(package_prefix): Searches for applications using package_prefix and filters the result list to only include apps whose package name starts with that prefix.
• get_details(package_name): Returns the details of the application whose package is package_name.

The app module is responsible for the REST presentation layer exposing JSON endpoints. The exposed endpoints are cached using Flask-Cache.

Instead of the API a scraper can also be used (without authentication) by setting the API_TYPE environment variable to scraper.

Programmatically:

api = Scraper(cache_max_age=int(os.environ.get('MAX_CACHE_AGE', 24 * 60 * 60)))

The exposed methods are similar to the ApiClient class methods:

• search(package_prefix): Searches for applications using package_prefix and filters the result list to only include apps whose package name starts with that prefix.
• developer(developer_name): Searches for applications developed by developer_name. Returns results in the same format as search.
• get_details(package_name): Returns the details of the application whose package is package_name.

Configuration options:

• HTTP_HOST: the host (interface) for Flask to bind to (default: 127.0.0.1)
• HTTP_PORT: the port to bind to (default: 5000)
• CORS_ORIGINS: comma separated list of origins to allow cross-domain GET requests from (default: http://localhost:?.*)

To allow connections from other hosts apart from localhost set the HTTP_PORT environment variable to 0.0.0.0 or as appropriate.

List of endpoints:

• /search/<package_prefix>: returns a list of application details whose package starts with the given prefix
• /developer/<developer_name>: returns a list of application details created by the given developer
• /details/<package_name>: returns the details of the application with the given package name

Docker

The web application is built as a Docker image too based on Alpine Linux for 3 architectures with the following tags:

• latest: for x86 hosts
  
• armhf: for 32-bits ARM hosts
  
• aarch64: for 64-bits ARM hosts
  

latest is auto-built on Docker Hub while the ARM builds are uploaded from Travis.

To run it:

docker run -d --name="googleplay-proxy" -p 5000:5000                       \
  -e GOOGLE_USERNAME='user' -e GOOGLE_PASSWORD='pass' -e ANDROID_ID='aid'  \
  -e CORS_ORIGINS='http://site.example.com,*.website.com'                  \
  rycus86/googleplay-proxy:latest

Or to scrape:

docker run -d --name="googleplay-proxy" -p 5000:5000                       \
  -e API_TYPE=scrape                                                       \
  -e CORS_ORIGINS='http://site.example.com,*.website.com'                  \
  rycus86/googleplay-proxy:latest

Or with docker-compose (for a Raspberry Pi for example):

version: '2'
services:

  googleplay-proxy:
    image: rycus86/googleplay-proxy:armhf
    read_only: true
    expose:
      - "5000"
    restart: always
    environment:
      - HTTP_HOST=0.0.0.0
    env_file:
      - googleplay-secrets.env

This way you can keep the secrets in the env_file instead of passing them to the Docker client from the command line.