Ratings and feedbacks

Once your android project is at the finishing stage, you need to add the following extra features to your app.

• Rate the app
• Because rates drive app download
• Other apps by you
• free advertisement for your apps
• Send feedback
• you need them to remove bugs and improve the app

Well, I personally feel that the pop up screens which ask the user to rate the app, is not a good idea. People may get irritated by this.

But to provide the first one, you need to know the playstore page of your app. How do you get the page if you have not yet published the page?

Well, the app page always looks like this

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=your_app_package_name


 
 the last part is your package name of the app.

And to take the user to all apps by you, you need to use a url like this

https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=yourdevelopername

 So these two settled, let us write our xml and code

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<menu xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    
    <item android:title="Rate the app"
        android:id="@+id/rateapp"/>
    <item android:title="Our other apps"
        android:id="@+id/otherapps"/>
    <item android:title="Send Feedback"
        android:id="@+id/feedback"/>


</menu>

Of course you will fill in the other menu items of your app.

In the onOptionsItemSelected method, add code for these three options.

public boolean onOptionsItemSelected(MenuItem item) {
        // Handle navigation view item clicks here.
        int id = item.getItemId();
        if (id==R.id.rateapp){
            startPlayStore(RATE_APP);
        }else if(id==R.id.otherapps){
            startPlayStore(OTHER_APPS);
        }else if(id==R.id.feedback){
            startMailFeedback();
        }
 /* rest of the code*/ 
        
    }

Now we need to write code for viewing playstore in external browser and we also need to write code to start mail program for feedback.

private void startPlayStore(int code) {
        String url ="";
        if(code==RATE_APP) {
             url= "https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=your_app_package_name";
        } else if (code == OTHER_APPS ){
              url = "https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=your_developer_name";
        }
        Intent intent = new  Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW,Uri.parse(url));
        startActivity(intent);
    }

    private void startMailFeedback() {
        Intent intent = new  Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
        intent.setData(Uri.parse("mailto:"));
        intent.setType("text/plain");
        intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_EMAIL,new String[]{DEV_MAIL_ID});
        intent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT,"Feedback on "+getResources().getString(R.string.app_name));
        startActivity(intent);
    }

Please fill in the values for your_app_package_name (which is of the format com.abcd.something - which is present in first line of all your activities :) )  and your_developer_name. And also provide your mail id in place of DEV_MAIL_ID

The first method shows your app in playstore. Second method takes you to email program - usually gmail with to as your mail id .

That's all.

And you are ready to get some ratings and feedbacks.

P.S. : I was wrong earlier. I had omitted details? from the url. I realized it hard way after publishing my app with wrong app link. I am sorry if I have caused any kind of problems to any of readers.