am 59450740: Merge change I0b0a4d6a into eclair-sdk

<ol>

<li><a href="#overview">Publishing on Android Market</a>

    <ol>

    <li><a href="#marketupgrade">Publishing Upgrades on Android Market</a>

    <li><a href="#marketupgrade">Publishing Updates on Android Market</a>

    <li><a href="#marketintent">Using Intents to Launch the Market Application</a></li>

    </ol></li>

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<li>Your application must be signed with a cryptographic private key whose

validity period ends after <span style="color:red">22 October 2033</span>. </li>

<li>Your application must define both an <code>android:versionCode</code> and an

<code>android:versionName</code> attribute in the <code>&lt;manifest&gt;</code>

<code>android:versionName</code> attribute in the

<a

href="{@docRoot}guide/topics/manifest/manifest-element.html"><code>&lt;manifest&gt;</code></a>

element of its manifest. The server uses the <code>android:versionCode</code> as

the basis for identifying the application internally and handling upgrades, and

the basis for identifying the application internally and handling updates, and

it displays the <code>android:versionName</code> to users as the application's

version.</li>

<li>Your application must define both an <code>android:icon</code> and an

</ol>

</div>

<h3 id="marketupgrade">Publishing Upgrades on Android Market</h3>

<h3 id="marketupgrade">Publishing Updates on Android Market</h3>

<p>The beta version of Android Market does not support notifying your users when

you publish a new version of your application. This capability will be

added soon, but currently the user must independently initiate download of an

upgraded application. When you publish an upgrade, you can assist users by

notifying them that the upgrade is available and giving them a way to download

the upgraded application from Android Market.</p>

<p>At any time after publishing an application on Android Market, you can upload

and publish an update to the same application package. When you publish an

update to an application, users who have already installed the

application will automatically receive a notification that an update is

available for the application. They can then choose to update the application

to the latest version.</p>

<p>Here is a suggested way of tracking installed application versions and

notifying users that an upgrade is available:</p>

<p>Before uploading the updated application, be sure that you have incremented

the <code>android:versionCode</code> and <code>android:versionName</code>

attributes in the <a

href="{@docRoot}guide/topics/manifest/manifest-element.html"><code>&lt;manifest&gt;</code></a>

element of the manifest file. Also, the package name must be the same and the

.apk must be signed with the same private key. If the package name and signing

certificate do <em>not</em> match those of the existing version, Market will

consider it a new application and will not offer it to users as an update.</p>

<ol>

<li>Have your app occasionally check in with a web-service that you're

running. This web service should return two values: the latest available

version number for the application (corresponding to

<code>android:versionCode</code>) and a URI string that your application

can later send in an Intent, to launch Market and search for the

upgraded application for the user. 

<p>The URI that your web service returns should be properly formatted to 

search Android Market for your upgraded application. See 

<a href="#marketintent">Using Intents to Launch the Market Application</a> 

for more information. The URI should specify the upgraded 

application's package name as the query parameter, since the package name

is guaranteed to be unique on Android Market. The URI format for the 

package name search is: </p>

<p><code>http://market.android.com/search?q=pname:&lt;package&gt;</code> or 

<br><code>market://search?q=pname:&lt;package&gt;</code></p>

</li>

<li>Your application can then compare its own version number against

that retrieved.  If the retrieved value is greater, your application can

show a dialog informing the user that a new version is available. The

dialog can offer buttons to begin the download or cancel. </li> <li>If

the user clicks the button to begin the download, your application can

call startActivity() using the ACTION_VIEW Intent, passing the URI

received from your web service. The Intent launches the Market

application on the device and initiates an immediate search on the

Android Market site, based on the query parameters in the URI. When the

result is displayed, the user can view the details of the upgraded

application and begin the download. 

<p>Note that, because the URI string is received from your web 

service and not hard-coded into your application, you can easily change

the Market launch behaviors whenever needed, without 

having to change your application. </p></li></ol>

<p>For more information about URIs you can pass to the Market application at

launch, see <a href="#marketintent">Using Intents to Launch the Market

Application</a>, below.</p>

<h3 id="marketintent">Using Intents to Launch the Market Application on 

a Device</h3>

<p>You can launch the Market application from another Android

application by sending an Intent to the system. You might want to do

this, for example, to help the user locate and download an upgrade to an

this, for example, to help the user locate and download an update to an

installed application, or to let the user know about related

applications that are available for download. </p>