Refunding Google Play In-App Purchases via API with Java

This article describes how to use Google Play Developer API with the Google API Client library with Java to refund Google Play In-App Purchases. Hopefully this information and the example script provided will save someone a bit of time.

Unlike Apple App Store, the Google Play platform offers an ability to refund in-app purchase orders, which can be accomplished using one of the following:

Manually via the Google Play Console on the web.
Programmatically via a REST API

If you need to refund more than a handful of orders, the REST API is a life saver. Google also provides a library that makes it very easy to get started. The only downside is there aren’t many examples and the documentation just points to the Javadoc references. Having gone through that exercise, here is my own example on how to refund orders using v3 of the client library.

Prerequisite

You will need a Google Service account that has permissions to manage orders.

Go to the API Access page on the Google Play Console.

Under Service Accounts, click Create Service Account.

Follow the instructions on the page to create your service account.

Once you’ve created the service account on the Google Developers Console, click Done. The API Access page automatically refreshes, and your service account will be listed.

Click Grant Access to provide the service account the rights to manage orders.

If you get lost you can also try this guide from Google’s docs.

Installation

Add the Google API Client library to your project using your favorite build tool.

Maven

Add the following lines to your pom.xml file:

<project>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.google.apis</groupId>
      <artifactId>google-api-services-androidpublisher</artifactId>
      <version>v3-rev20200223-1.30.9</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

Gradle

repositories {
  mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
  compile 'com.google.apis:google-api-services-androidpublisher:v3-rev20200223-1.30.9'
}

Example Script

import com.google.api.client.googleapis.auth.oauth2.GoogleCredential;
import com.google.api.client.http.HttpTransport;
import com.google.api.client.http.javanet.NetHttpTransport;
import com.google.api.client.json.jackson2.JacksonFactory;
import com.google.api.services.androidpublisher.AndroidPublisher;
import com.google.api.services.androidpublisher.AndroidPublisherScopes;

import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.logging.Handler;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.LogRecord;
import java.util.logging.Logger;

class Scratch {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        enableLogging();

        Set<String> SCOPES = Collections.singleton(AndroidPublisherScopes.ANDROIDPUBLISHER);
        JacksonFactory jsonFactory = JacksonFactory.getDefaultInstance();
        NetHttpTransport httpTransport = new NetHttpTransport();
        GoogleCredential credential = getGoogleCredentials("private service key goes here")
                                        .createScoped(SCOPES);
        AndroidPublisher androidPublisher = new AndroidPublisher
                .Builder(httpTransport, jsonFactory, credential)
                .setApplicationName("com.yourname.app")
                .build();
        try {
            androidPublisher.orders()
              .refund("com.yourname.app","GPA.3333-7777-6666-44444")
              .execute();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            System.out.println(e.getMessage());
        }
    }

    private static GoogleCredential getGoogleCredentials(String privateKey) {
        try {
            return GoogleCredential.fromStream(
              new ByteArrayInputStream(privateKey.getBytes()));
        } catch (IOException e) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Private key for Google Pay is invalid", e);
        }
    }

    public static void enableLogging() {
        Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(HttpTransport.class.getName());
        logger.setLevel(Level.CONFIG);
        logger.addHandler(new Handler() {
            @Override
            public void close() throws SecurityException {
            }
            @Override
            public void flush() {
            }
            @Override
            public void publish(LogRecord record) {
                // Default ConsoleHandler will print >= INFO to System.err.
                if (record.getLevel().intValue() < Level.INFO.intValue()) {
                    System.out.println(record.getMessage());
                }
            }
        });
    }
}

In the above script:

Refund API returns 204 HTTP Status Code (No content) if a refund was successful.
Additional logging is enabled by calling enableLogging() . This provides debug logging of NetHttpTransport request/response.

Hopefully this example script will save someone a bit of time.

Sergey Maskalik's blog