How to get Android application id?

Question

In Android, how do I get the application\'s id programatically (or by some other method), and how can I communicate with other applications using that id?

Answer 1

To track installations, you could for example use a UUID as an identifier, and simply create a new one the first time an app runs after installation. Here is a sketch of a class named “Installation” with one static method Installation.id(Context context). You could imagine writing more installation-specific data into the INSTALLATION file.

public class Installation {
private static String sID = null;
private static final String INSTALLATION = "INSTALLATION";
public synchronized static String id(Context context) {

    if (sID == null) {  
       File installation = new File(context.getFilesDir(), INSTALLATION);
       try {
           if (!installation.exists())
               writeInstallationFile(installation);
           sID = readInstallationFile(installation);
       } catch (Exception e) {
           throw new RuntimeException(e);
       }
    }
   return sID;
}

private static String readInstallationFile(File installation) throws IOException {
   RandomAccessFile f = new RandomAccessFile(installation, "r");
   byte[] bytes = new byte[(int) f.length()];
   f.readFully(bytes);
   f.close();
   return new String(bytes);
}

private static void writeInstallationFile(File installation) throws IOException {
   FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(installation);
   String id = UUID.randomUUID().toString();
   out.write(id.getBytes());
   out.close();
}

}

Yon can see more at https://github.com/MShoaibAkram/Android-Unique-Application-ID