uniqueidentifier - Using the new Android Advertiser id inside an SDK

Question

It makes a lot of sense that Android ad SDKs will use Android's the new advertiser id.

It seems that you can only get the id by using the google services sdk, as mentioned here: http://developer.android.com/google/play-services/id.html.

Using the google play services sdk, requires referencing the google-play-services_lib project, which causes several problems:

1. A lot of SDKs are jars, meaning they can't use google-play-services_lib as is (because they can't include resources).
2. If I only want the advertiser ID, I need to add google-play-services_lib to my project, which weights almost 1 MB.

Is there a way to only get the advertiser id, without using resources?

Answer 1

I ran into the same issue, if you just need the advertiserId you could interact with the Google Play Service directly using an Intent. Example of custom class:

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.concurrent.LinkedBlockingQueue;
import android.content.ComponentName;
import android.content.Context;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.content.ServiceConnection;
import android.content.pm.PackageManager;
import android.os.IBinder;
import android.os.IInterface;
import android.os.Looper;
import android.os.Parcel;
import android.os.RemoteException;

public final class AdvertisingIdClient {

public static final class AdInfo {
    private final String advertisingId;
    private final boolean limitAdTrackingEnabled;

    AdInfo(String advertisingId, boolean limitAdTrackingEnabled) {
        this.advertisingId = advertisingId;
        this.limitAdTrackingEnabled = limitAdTrackingEnabled;
    }

    public String getId() {
        return this.advertisingId;
    }

    public boolean isLimitAdTrackingEnabled() {
        return this.limitAdTrackingEnabled;
    }
}

public static AdInfo getAdvertisingIdInfo(Context context) throws Exception {
    if(Looper.myLooper() == Looper.getMainLooper()) throw new IllegalStateException("Cannot be called from the main thread");

    try { PackageManager pm = context.getPackageManager(); pm.getPackageInfo("com.android.vending", 0); }  
    catch (Exception e) { throw e; }

    AdvertisingConnection connection = new AdvertisingConnection();
    Intent intent = new Intent("com.google.android.gms.ads.identifier.service.START");
    intent.setPackage("com.google.android.gms");
    if(context.bindService(intent, connection, Context.BIND_AUTO_CREATE)) {
        try {
            AdvertisingInterface adInterface = new AdvertisingInterface(connection.getBinder());
            AdInfo adInfo = new AdInfo(adInterface.getId(), adInterface.isLimitAdTrackingEnabled(true));
            return adInfo;
        } catch (Exception exception) {
            throw exception;
        } finally {
            context.unbindService(connection);
        }
    }       
    throw new IOException("Google Play connection failed");     
}

private static final class AdvertisingConnection implements ServiceConnection {
    boolean retrieved = false;
    private final LinkedBlockingQueue<IBinder> queue = new LinkedBlockingQueue<IBinder>(1);

    public void onServiceConnected(ComponentName name, IBinder service) {
        try { this.queue.put(service); }
        catch (InterruptedException localInterruptedException){}
    }

    public void onServiceDisconnected(ComponentName name){}

    public IBinder getBinder() throws InterruptedException {
        if (this.retrieved) throw new IllegalStateException();
        this.retrieved = true;
        return (IBinder)this.queue.take();
    }
}

private static final class AdvertisingInterface implements IInterface {
    private IBinder binder;

    public AdvertisingInterface(IBinder pBinder) {
        binder = pBinder;
    }

    public IBinder asBinder() {
        return binder;
    }

    public String getId() throws RemoteException {
        Parcel data = Parcel.obtain();
        Parcel reply = Parcel.obtain();
        String id;
        try {
            data.writeInterfaceToken("com.google.android.gms.ads.identifier.internal.IAdvertisingIdService");
            binder.transact(1, data, reply, 0);
            reply.readException();
            id = reply.readString();
        } finally {
            reply.recycle();
            data.recycle();
        }
        return id;
    }

    public boolean isLimitAdTrackingEnabled(boolean paramBoolean) throws RemoteException {
        Parcel data = Parcel.obtain();
        Parcel reply = Parcel.obtain();
        boolean limitAdTracking;
        try {
            data.writeInterfaceToken("com.google.android.gms.ads.identifier.internal.IAdvertisingIdService");
            data.writeInt(paramBoolean ? 1 : 0);
            binder.transact(2, data, reply, 0);
            reply.readException();
            limitAdTracking = 0 != reply.readInt();
        } finally {
            reply.recycle();
            data.recycle();
        }
        return limitAdTracking;
    }
}
}

Make sure that you are not calling this from the main UI thread. For example, use something like:

new Thread(new Runnable() {        
    public void run() {
        try {
            AdInfo adInfo = AdvertisingIdClient.getAdvertisingIdInfo(context);
            advertisingId = adInfo.getId();
            optOutEnabled = adInfo.isLimitAdTrackingEnabled();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();                            
        }                       
    }
}).start();