This is a node js server that can be used to fetch data (description, thumbnail images, required permissions) from the Google Play Store. API Docs: http://playstore-api.herokuapp.com/docs/
http://playstore-api.herokuapp.com/playstore/apps/com.whatsapp
<html>
<head>
<body>
<p></p>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.0/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
var packageID = 'com.whatsapp';
$.getJSON('http://playstore-api.herokuapp.com/playstore/apps/' + packageID)
.done(function(appDetails) {
$('p:last').html(JSON.stringify(appDetails));
});
</script>
</body>
</head>
<html>mkdir myapp && cd myapp
npm init
npm install node-playstore-api --save
nano test.jstest.js
var server = require('./playStoreData.js');
// you should see "Listening on 5000" on the console
// try browsing to: http://localhost:5000/playstore/apps/com.whatsappfork the repo. change the package name to match your heroku app. change the Procfile to match your folder/file names.
foreman starttry browsing to: http://localhost:5000/playstore/apps/com.whatsapp
grab playStore.js and playStoreData.js to do something like this:
var playStoreData = require('./playStoreData.js');
var packageID = 'com.whatsapp';
playStoreData.getAppDetails(packageID, function(rslt) {
console.log(JSON.stringify(rslt));
// prints out the response JSON containing all the app's details
});connect, express, docco, lodash, cors, request, cheerio, lru-cache, logfmt (See NPM Page: https://www.npmjs.org/package/node-playstore-api)
playStore.js is responsible for scraping the data from the play store. it uses cheerio (node.js module that allows you to query the HTML result jQuery style) to parse from the play store after getting it (using request module). when a call to the async function getAppDetails(packageID, callback) is made, if the result is cached (using lru-in-memory-cache), it returns it immediately. if there is a cache miss, it fetches the content from the play store (using request module, http for humans) and queries the html content using cheerio. read more about using cheerio and request to build a simple scraper.
playStoreData.js is being used just a method of isolating playStore.js from the actual code written for exposing the data via a REST API.
playStoreResources.js exports the API GET method, defining the route and behavior with swagger.
The code is then deployed to heroku (see this page on how to do that - it's easy and free: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/getting-started-with-nodejs), and viola, a nice scalable play store API in minutes.