Android Question Upgrade VS full app update / download from google play store

Darren69

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Hello everyone,

I did try searching the forums but failed to find an answer, so let me put that out there first.

I recently discovered that the google play store seems to update an app rather than do the full update from the latest APK listed. I only discovered this when I pushed the latest version of my application out that had a new database in it (which was named the same as the previous database) which had a new column added to a table. users started reporting the app was crashing and I could not figure out why as my testers never reported the problem.

Long story short, seems the users with crashing apps had the latest version of the app but the old version of the database, a clean install (removing the app and re downloading it) sorted the issue out, which was strange and brings me to this question.

is there a way in B4A to flag that an update needs a full version download from the store? I was poking around the play console and didn't see anything obvious there to flag my latest version as an update / new version vs an upgrade.

any help would be appreciated.

thanks

Darren
 

DonManfred

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Updates in Playstore is ONE File. The APK. There is no such thing like a partial update.
The problem must be somewhere else.
 
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Darren69

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Thanks, I will do some digging in my code, as I was thinking about this more on my drive home last night. I might have been hung up by seeing references to update vs upgrade in some other forums when I was searching the problem flagged by some users.

thanks for confirming for me though its a single file that is pushed and google does nothing clever to save bandwidth when pushing updates from the store.
 
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mcqueccu

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For databases, you will have to manually track the database version and do any update necessary.

With APK, and Now AAB files, I do not think embedded files are updated.
Example, if your app checks during first install if database exist, if not copy. If you update the application, since that database is still there, it wont get updated AUTOMATICALLY. You have to write a code to update the table in that old database, or delete it completely or create new database based on your needs

Check this https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/updating-an-embedded-db.126077/#content
 
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Darren69

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Longtime User
For databases, you will have to manually track the database version and do any update necessary.

With APK, and Now AAB files, I do not think embedded files are updated.
Example, if your app checks during first install if database exist, if not copy. If you update the application, since that database is still there, it wont get updated AUTOMATICALLY. You have to write a code to update the table in that old database, or delete it completely or create new database based on your needs

Check this https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/updating-an-embedded-db.126077/#content

You are right, and that is what was happening, the existing database was never updating to the new one, I guess months ago I had been working on implementing something to check for this, but found it commented out, guess i thought I had finished it, and that is the problem I am having lately, returning to old code I have not touched for months and months and being busy with work is I just forget where I was even though I left a note at the top of my code to finish this off!! 🤦‍♂️
 
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