In this document
- Adding the AIDL file
- Updating Your Manifest
- Creating a ServiceConnection
- Making In-app Billing Requests
Reference
Related Samples
See also
In-app Billing on Google Play provides a straightforward, simple interface for sending In-app Billing requests and managing In-app Billing transactions using Google Play. The information below covers the basics of how to make calls from your application to the In-app Billing service using the Version 3 API.
Note: To see a complete implementation and learn how to test your application, see the Selling In-app Products training class. The training class provides a complete sample In-app Billing application, including convenience classes to handle key tasks related to setting up your connection, sending billing requests and processing responses from Google Play, and managing background threading so that you can make In-app Billing calls from your main activity.
Before you start, be sure that you read the In-app Billing Overview to familiarize yourself with concepts that will make it easier for you to implement In-app Billing.
To implement In-app Billing in your application, you need to do the following:
- Add the In-app Billing library to your project.
- Update your
AndroidManifest.xml
file. - Create a
ServiceConnection
and bind it toIInAppBillingService
. - Send In-app Billing requests from your application to
IInAppBillingService
. - Handle In-app Billing responses from Google Play.
Adding the AIDL file to your project
The TriviaDriva
sample application contains an Android Interface Definition Language (AIDL) file which defines the interface to Google Play's In-app Billing service. When you add this file to your project, the Android build environment creates an interface file (IIAppBillingService.java
). You can then use this interface to make billing requests by invoking IPC method calls.
To add the In-app Billing Version 3 library to your project:
- Copy the
IInAppBillingService.aidl
file to your Android project.- If you are using Eclipse: Import the
IInAppBillingService.aidl
file into your/src
directory. Eclipse automatically generates the interface file when you build your project. - If you are developing in a non-Eclipse environment: Create the following directory
/src/com/android/vending/billing
and copy theIInAppBillingService.aidl
file into this directory. Put the AIDL file into your project and use the Ant tool to build your project so that theIInAppBillingService.java
file gets generated.
- If you are using Eclipse: Import the
- Build your application. You should see a generated file named
IInAppBillingService.java
in the/gen
directory of your project.
Updating Your Application's Manifest
In-app billing relies on the Google Play application, which handles all communication between your application and the Google Play server. To use the Google Play application, your application must request the proper permission. You can do this by adding the com.android.vending.BILLING
permission to your AndroidManifest.xml file. If your application does not declare the In-app Billing permission, but attempts to send billing requests, Google Play will refuse the requests and respond with an error.
To give your app the necessary permission, add this line in your Android.xml
manifest file:
<uses-permission android:name="com.android.vending.BILLING" />
Creating a ServiceConnection
Your application must have a ServiceConnection
to facilitate messaging between
your application and Google Play. At a minimum, your application must do the following:
- Bind to
IInAppBillingService
. - Send billing requests (as IPC method calls) to the Google Play application.
- Handle the synchronous response messages that are returned with each billing request.
Binding to IInAppBillingService
To establish a connection with the In-app Billing service on Google Play, implement a ServiceConnection
to bind your activity to IInAppBillingService
. Override the onServiceDisconnected
and onServiceConnected
methods to get a reference to the IInAppBillingService
instance after a connection has been established.
IInAppBillingService mService; ServiceConnection mServiceConn = new ServiceConnection() { @Override public void onServiceDisconnected(ComponentName name) { mService = null; } @Override public void onServiceConnected(ComponentName name, IBinder service) { mService = IInAppBillingService.Stub.asInterface(service); } };
In your activity’s onCreate
method, perform the binding by calling the bindService
method. Pass the method an Intent
that references the In-app Billing service and an instance of the ServiceConnection
that you created.
@Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_main); bindService(new Intent("com.android.vending.billing.InAppBillingService.BIND"), mServiceConn, Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE);
You can now use the mService reference to communicate with the Google Play service.
Important: Remember to unbind from the In-app Billing service when you are done with your Activity
. If you don’t unbind, the open service connection could cause your device’s performance to degrade. This example shows how to perform the unbind operation on a service connection to In-app Billing called mServiceConn
by overriding the activity’s onDestroy
method.
@Override public void onDestroy() { super.onDestroy(); if (mServiceConn != null) { unbindService(mServiceConn); } }
For a complete implementation of a service connection that binds to the IInAppBillingService
,
see the Selling In-app
Products training class and associated sample.
Making In-app Billing Requests
Once your application is connected to Google Play, you can initiate purchase requests for in-app products. Google Play provides a checkout interface for users to enter their payment method, so your application does not need to handle payment transactions directly. When an item is purchased, Google Play recognizes that the user has ownership of that item and prevents the user from purchasing another item with the same product ID until it is consumed. You can control how the item is consumed in your application, and notify Google Play to make the item available for purchase again. You can also query Google Play to quickly retrieve the list of purchases that were made by the user. This is useful, for example, when you want to restore the user's purchases when your user launches your app.
Querying for Items Available for Purchase
In your application, you can query the item details from Google Play using the In-app Billing Version 3 API. To pass a request to the In-app Billing service, first create a Bundle
that contains a String ArrayList
of product IDs with key "ITEM_ID_LIST", where each string is a product ID for an purchasable item.
ArrayListskuList = new ArrayList (); skuList.add("premiumUpgrade"); skuList.add("gas"); Bundle querySkus = new Bundle(); querySkus.putStringArrayList(“ITEM_ID_LIST”, skuList);
To retrieve this information from Google Play, call the getSkuDetails
method on the In-app Billing Version 3 API, and pass the method the In-app Billing API version (“3”), the package name of your calling app, the purchase type (“inapp”), and the Bundle
that you created.
Bundle skuDetails = mService.getSkuDetails(3, getPackageName(), "inapp", querySkus);
If the request is successful, the returned Bundle
has a response code of BILLING_RESPONSE_RESULT_OK
(0).
Warning: Do not call the getSkuDetails
method on the main thread. Calling this method triggers a network request which could block your main thread. Instead, create a separate thread and call the getSkuDetails
method from inside that thread.
To see all the possible response codes from Google Play, see In-app Billing Reference.
The query results are stored in a String ArrayList with key DETAILS_LIST
. The purchase information is stored in the String in JSON format. To see the types of product detail information that are returned, see In-app Billing Reference.
In this example, you are retrieving the prices for your in-app items from the skuDetails Bundle
returned from the previous code snippet.
int response = skuDetails.getInt("RESPONSE_CODE"); if (response == 0) { ArrayListresponseList = skuDetails.getStringArrayList("DETAILS_LIST"); for (String thisResponse : responseList) { JSONObject object = new JSONObject(thisResponse); String sku = object.getString("productId"); String price = object.getString("price"); if (sku.equals("premiumUpgrade")) mPremiumUpgradePrice = price; else if (sku.equals("gas")) mGasPrice = price; } }
Purchasing an Item
To start a purchase request from your app, call the getBuyIntent
method on the In-app Billing service. Pass in to the method the In-app Billing API version (“3”), the package name of your calling app, the product ID for the item to purchase, the purchase type (“inapp”), and a developerPayload
String. The developerPayload
String is used to specify any additional arguments that you want Google Play to send back along with the purchase information.
Bundle buyIntentBundle = mService.getBuyIntent(3, getPackageName(), sku, "inapp", "bGoa+V7g/yqDXvKRqq+JTFn4uQZbPiQJo4pf9RzJ");
If the request is successful, the returned Bundle
has a response code of BILLING_RESPONSE_RESULT_OK
(0) and a PendingIntent
that you can use to start the purchase flow. To see all the possible response codes from Google Play, see In-app Billing Reference. Next, extract a PendingIntent
from the response Bundle
with key BUY_INTENT
.
PendingIntent pendingIntent = buyIntentBundle.getParcelable("BUY_INTENT");
To complete the purchase transaction, call the startIntentSenderForResult
method and use the PendingIntent
that you created. In this example, you are using an arbitrary value of 1001 for the request code.
startIntentSenderForResult(pendingIntent.getIntentSender(), 1001, new Intent(), Integer.valueOf(0), Integer.valueOf(0), Integer.valueOf(0));
Google Plays sends a response to your PendingIntent
to the onActivityResult
method of your application. The onActivityResult
method will have a result code of Activity.RESULT_OK
(1) or Activity.RESULT_CANCELED
(0). To see the types of order information that is returned in the response Intent
, see In-app Billing Reference.
The purchase data for the order is a String in JSON format that is mapped to the INAPP_PURCHASE_DATA
key in the response Intent
, for example:
'{ "orderId":"12999763169054705758.1371079406387615", "packageName":"com.example.app", "productId":"exampleSku", "purchaseTime":1345678900000, "purchaseState":0, "developerPayload":"bGoa+V7g/yqDXvKRqq+JTFn4uQZbPiQJo4pf9RzJ", "purchaseToken":"rojeslcdyyiapnqcynkjyyjh" }'
Continuing from the previous example, you get the response code, purchase data, and signature from the response Intent
.
@Override protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) { if (requestCode == 1001) { int responseCode = data.getIntExtra("RESPONSE_CODE", 0); String purchaseData = data.getStringExtra("INAPP_PURCHASE_DATA"); String dataSignature = data.getStringExtra("INAPP_DATA_SIGNATURE"); if (resultCode == RESULT_OK) { try { JSONObject jo = new JSONObject(purchaseData); String sku = jo.getString("productId"); alert("You have bought the " + sku + ". Excellent choice, adventurer!"); } catch (JSONException e) { alert("Failed to parse purchase data."); e.printStackTrace(); } } } }
Security Recommendation: When you send a purchase request, create a String token that uniquely identifies this purchase request and include this token in the developerPayload
.You can use a randomly generated string as the token. When you receive the purchase response from Google Play, make sure to check the returned data signature, the orderId
, and the developerPayload
String. For added security, you should perform the checking on your own secure server. Make sure to verify that the orderId
is a unique value that you have not previously processed, and the developerPayload
String matches the token that you sent previously with the purchase request.
Querying for Purchased Items
To retrieve information about purchases made by a user from your app, call the getPurchases
method on the In-app Billing Version 3 service. Pass in to the method the In-app Billing API version (“3”), the package name of your calling app, and the purchase type (“inapp”).
Bundle ownedItems = mService.getPurchases(3, getPackageName(), "inapp", null);
The Google Play service returns only the purchases made by the user account that is currently logged in to the device. If the request is successful, the returned Bundle
has a response code of 0. The response Bundle
also contains a list of the product IDs, a list of the order details for each purchase, and the signatures for each purchase.
To improve performance, the In-app Billing service returns only up to 700 products that are owned by the user when getPurchase
is first called. If the user owns a large number of products, Google Play includes a String token mapped to the key INAPP_CONTINUATION_TOKEN
in the response Bundle
to indicate that more products can be retrieved. Your application can then make a subsequent getPurchases
call, and pass in this token as an argument. Google Play continues to return a continuation token in the response Bundle
until all products that are owned by the user has been sent to your app.
For more information about the data returned by getPurchases
, see In-app Billing Reference. The following example shows how you can retrieve this data from the response.
int response = ownedItems.getInt("RESPONSE_CODE"); if (response == 0) { ArrayListownedSkus = ownedItems.getStringArrayList("INAPP_PURCHASE_ITEM_LIST"); ArrayList purchaseDataList = ownedItems.getStringArrayList("INAPP_PURCHASE_DATA_LIST"); ArrayList signatureList = ownedItems.getStringArrayList("INAPP_DATA_SIGNATURE"); String continuationToken = ownedItems.getString("INAPP_CONTINUATION_TOKEN"); for (int i = 0; i < purchaseDataList.size(); ++i) { String purchaseData = purchaseDataList.get(i); String signature = signatureList.get(i); String sku = ownedSkus.get(i); // do something with this purchase information // e.g. display the updated list of products owned by user } // if continuationToken != null, call getPurchases again // and pass in the token to retrieve more items }
Consuming a Purchase
You can use the In-app Billing Version 3 API to track the ownership of purchased items in Google Play. Once an item is purchased, it is considered to be "owned" and cannot be purchased from Google Play. You must send a consumption request for the item before Google Play makes it available for purchase again. All managed in-app products are consumable. How you use the consumption mechanism in your app is up to you. Typically, you would implement consumption for products with temporary benefits that users may want to purchase multiple times (for example, in-game currency or equipment). You would typically not want to implement consumption for products that are purchased once and provide a permanent effect (for example, a premium upgrade).
To record a purchase consumption, send the consumePurchase
method to the In-app Billing service and pass in the purchaseToken
String value that identifies the purchase to be removed. The purchaseToken
is part of the data returned in the INAPP_PURCHASE_DATA
String by the Google Play service following a successful purchase request. In this example, you are recording the consumption of a product that is identified with the purchaseToken
in the token
variable.
int response = mService.consumePurchase(3, getPackageName(), token);
Warning: Do not call the consumePurchase
method on the main thread. Calling this method triggers a network request which could block your main thread. Instead, create a separate thread and call the consumePurchase
method from inside that thread.
It's your responsibility to control and track how the in-app product is provisioned to the user. For example, if the user purchased in-game currency, you should update the player's inventory with the amount of currency purchased.
Security Recommendation: You must send a consumption request before provisioning the benefit of the consumable in-app purchase to the user. Make sure that you have received a successful consumption response from Google Play before you provision the item.