Metro App, Query Current Apps in Windows Store

3
votes

How does one query data such as App Icons, Reviews, Stars, Price, etc. from Windows Store in another App? For instance, picture an app called "best drawing tools" with comparisons of 5 popular drawing tool apps, then links to Window Store (Or even better direct install links).

The premise of the app "Great Windows Apps" (http://www.greatwindowsapps.com) seems to be the basic functionality I am trying to imitate.

I also found MetroStore Scanner http://metrostore.preweb.sk which appears to query the windows store from the web, but I am looking to query from another app.

I have been researching for a while and cant seem to find a good starting point or resource. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

1
c#xamlwindows-8microsoft-metro
The author of winappupdate.com indicates he did it by locating the Windows Store sitemap, regularly iterating through it and indexing the content in the store. While he doesn't share the uri, a bit of research might uncover it... article here. - SWalters
The developer of greatwindowsapps.com (that would be me) did it by finding the XML feeds used by the Store app and figuring out the requests needed to retrieve them. I'm also not sharing the particulars, but the trick to doing this is persistence :) - Chris Newman
Sounds like a tool like Fiddler would come in handy then :) - SWalters
Well that was instructive! Started Fiddler2... started the Store app... reconfigured Fiddler2... re-started the Store app... voila! JSON and XML galore. Now I'm wondering what the heck a "Squak" template is. - SWalters

1 Answers

2
votes

Here is the link to the sitemap: http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/sitemap/sitemap_1.xml

Huge file :) and there is more, just change the 1 to 2, 3...