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I have made an Android app using Adobe Phonegap Build. It is complete and I'm on the verge of submitting it to the Google Play market, except that I only recently discovered that in order to support the intended business model that supports the app, that I need to enable "billing" permissions.

Unfortunately, it seems it is not in any way possible to enable the billing permissions using the config.xml file where Phonegap sets the rest of the permissions. Billing is not yet, and might not ever be, supported by Phonegap.

So now I'm stuck and wondering what my options are, or if I even have any. Is it in any way possible to hack or modify the apk file generated by Adobe Phonegap Build to enable billing permissions? Is there any other way I can get the billing permission attached to my app?

(Please note that if it had been possible to build my app in native Android code, then I would have taken that option from the start, so please do not suggest that I should solve this problem by rewriting the app. For better and for worse, this is the point I'm at now. Thanks for your understanding.)

Questioner
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1 Answers1

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This should be possible using apktool, found here:

http://ibotpeaches.github.io/Apktool/

You should be able to decode XML resources and repackage as an APK.

Decompiling the apk is done as follows:

java -jar apktool.jar decode app.apk app

If it is just the billing permission that you need to add you will need to add the following line to the AndroidManifest.xml file:

<uses-permission android:name="com.android.vending.BILLING" />

After you have made the necessary changes you can recompile into an apk using:

java -jar apktool.jar build app app_new.apk

Several other links that you may find useful:

Android, is it possible to manually change somethings in manifest file directly from APK?

How to view AndroidManifest.xml from APK file?

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William Pownall
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  • Thank you for this suggestion. I have downloaded the tool and Linux installer (I'm on Mint Linux), but I'm stuck because I don't know how to run it. The documentation says you need "basic knowledge of what is SDK, aapt, PATH, smali", which I don't have. – Questioner Aug 07 '13 at 06:30
  • Thank you for your update. The commands you provided worked, and I was able to edit the `config.xml` file and recompile the apk. However, when I uploaded the revised apk to the Google Developer console, it said "You uploaded an APK that is not zip aligned. You will need to run a zip align tool on your APK and upload it again." I will Google that error and see if I can find out what zip alignment is and how to solve it. – Questioner Aug 07 '13 at 06:41
  • Unfortunately I'm not familiar with submitting applications to Google Play, however this info might be appropriate: http://developer.android.com/tools/help/zipalign.html – William Pownall Aug 07 '13 at 06:44
  • It appears you need the Android SDK installed to use the zipalign tool (I assume you don't as you are using PhoneGap Build), the command used to zipalign your apk is "zipalign -v 4 your_project_name-unaligned.apk your_project_name.apk" – William Pownall Aug 07 '13 at 06:47
  • You've been incredibly helpful and I'm sure to mark this as correct, I'm just being cautious until I have been successful in the whole process. I managed to get the `zipalign` program from the Android SDK, but now Google Developer Console tells me my apk is "unsigned". I think the signing command is likely more complicated, so I have branched off to an [additional question on the matter](http://stackoverflow.com/q/18096788/184108). – Questioner Aug 07 '13 at 07:08
  • With the [help I got](http://stackoverflow.com/a/18097164/184108) in the other question I was able to successfully "sign" my app and then zipalign it, and then successfully upload it to the Google Developer Console. I would +1 this answer all day if I could. Thank you so much for your concise and helpful answer. – Questioner Aug 07 '13 at 12:32