Get ranking and reviews from AppStore

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Ranking

App ranking informations can be get from iTunes RSS feeds provided by Apple, currently, at most Top 300 are listed in each feed.

For example, if I want the top 300 grossing apps in "Games" category, after input my requirements, I get the feed URL as follows:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/topgrossingapplications/limit=300/genre=6014/xml

Using python, I chose feedparser as an RSS parser.

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feed = feedparser.parse(
    'https://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/topgrossingapplications/limit=300/genre=6014/xml')
rank = 0
for entry in feed.entries:
    rank+=1
    print str(rank), entry['title']

Then, we get the ranking list:

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1 Candy Crush Saga ® - King.com Limited
2 Clash of Clans - Supercell
3 MARVEL War of Heroes - Mobage, Inc.
4 Hay Day - Supercell

...

297 Overkill 2 - Craneballs Studios LLC
298 Earn to Die - Not Doppler
299 Extreme Road Trip 2 - Roofdog Games
300 Lords & Knights - Medieval Strategy MMO - XYRALITY GmbH

Reviews

In the iTunes RSS feeds, we can't find how to get the App reviews, but actually, it has, someone made a little guess.

For example, one could get App's most recent reviews from below feed, by specifying the App ID (535886823) and store country:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/customerreviews/id=535886823/sortBy=mostRecent/xml

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feed = feedparser.parse(
    'https://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/customerreviews/id=535886823/sortBy=mostRecent/xml')
rank = 0
for entry in feed.entries[1:]:
    rank += 1
    print '****** review %d ******' % rank
    print 'title: %s' % entry['title']
    print 'content: %s' % entry['content'][0]['value']
    print 'author: %s' % entry['author']
    print 'rating: %s' % entry['im_rating']

Pay attention, the first entry of this feed is the App description, not reviews.

Result:

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****** review 1 ******
title: Ahhhhhh
content: Ahhhhhh
author: Andrew288195Az
rating: 1
****** review 2 ******
title: Perfect except
content: I still have to switch to safari to "Ctrl+F" a web page.

Seriously?
author: SarahTimmins
rating: 1
****** review 3 ******
title: Crashes too much
content: Title pretty much says it all.
author: RoboWarriorSr
rating: 2
****** review 4 ******
title: My penis is big
content: I have a penis of 1 feet
author: Jiackfabri
rating: 5

...

****** review 49 ******
title: Works great!
content: I was skeptical but I actually really like this browser. Good job Googlé.
author: eSquish
rating: 5
****** review 50 ******
title: Amazing
content: This app/browser is fantastic! It runs fast, and efficient it has shown me the awesomeness that is google and convinced me to buy a chromebook
author: Seandog247
rating: 5

We can only get 50 reviews, but the feeds updated more frequently than the ranking feeds.

There are four types of reviews list,

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Most Recent
https://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/customerreviews/id=535886823/sortBy=mostRecent/xml

Most Helpful
https://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/customerreviews/id=535886823/sortBy=mostHelpful/xml

Most Favorable
Most Critical

I couldn't figure out what the feeds URL are of last two types, if anyone knows, please leave a comment, and I'll update this post.

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