1 page.title=Application Licensing 2 @jd:body 3 4 5 <p>Google Play offers a licensing service that lets you enforce licensing policies for 6 applications that you publish on Google Play. With Google Play Licensing, your application can 7 query Google Play at run time to obtain the licensing status for the current user, then allow or 8 disallow further use as appropriate. </p> 9 10 <p>Using the service, you can apply a flexible licensing policy on an application-by-application 11 basis—each application can enforce licensing in the way most appropriate for it. If necessary, 12 an application can apply custom constraints based on the licensing status obtained from Google Play. 13 For example, an application can check the licensing status and then apply custom constraints 14 that allow the user to run it unlicensed for a specific validity period. An application can also 15 restrict use of the application to a specific device, in addition to any other constraints. </p> 16 17 <p>The licensing service is a secure means of controlling access to your applications. When an 18 application checks the licensing status, the Google Play server signs the licensing status 19 response using a key pair that is uniquely associated with the application. Your application 20 stores the public key in its compiled <code>.apk</code> file and uses it to verify the licensing 21 status response.</p> 22 23 <p>Any application that you publish through Google Play can use the Google Play Licensing 24 service. No special account or registration is needed. Additionally, because the service uses no 25 dedicated framework APIs, you can add licensing to any application that uses a minimum API level of 26 3 or higher.</p> 27 28 <p class="note"><strong>Note:</strong> The Google Play Licensing service is primarily intended 29 for paid applications that wish to verify that the current user did in fact pay for the application 30 on Google Play. However, any application (including free apps) may use the licensing service 31 to initiate the download of an APK expansion file. In which case, the request that your application 32 sends to the licensing service is not to check whether the user paid for the app, but to request the 33 URL of the expansion files. For information about downloading expansion files for your application, 34 read the guide to <a href="{@docRoot}google/play/expansion-files.html">APK Expansion Files</a>.</p> 35 36 37 <p>To learn more about Google Play's application licensing service and start integrating it into 38 your applications, read the following documents:</p> 39 40 <dl> 41 <dt><strong><a href="{@docRoot}google/play/licensing/overview.html">Licensing 42 Overview</a></strong></dt> 43 <dd>Describes how the service works and what a typical licensing implementation looks 44 like.</dd> 45 <dt><strong><a href="{@docRoot}google/play/licensing/setting-up.html">Setting Up for 46 Licensing</a></strong></dt> 47 <dd>Explains how to set up your Google Play account, development environment, and 48 testing environment in order to add licensing to your app.</dd> 49 <dt><strong><a href="{@docRoot}google/play/licensing/adding-licensing.html">Adding 50 Licensing to Your App</a></strong></dt> 51 <dd>Provides a step-by-step guide to add licensing verification to your application.</dd> 52 <dt><strong><a href="{@docRoot}google/play/licensing/licensing-reference.html">Licensing 53 Reference</a></strong></dt> 54 <dd>Provides detailed information about the licensing library's classes and the service response 55 codes.</dd> 56 </dl> 57 58 59 60 61 62
