Glossary · Store notifications
What are Google Play real-time developer notifications (RTDN)?
Real-time developer notifications (RTDN)
Real-time developer notifications (RTDN) are messages that Google Play publishes to a Cloud Pub/Sub topic when a subscription or one-time purchase changes, such as a renewal, a payment decline or a refund. A notification names the event and the purchase token only. Your server must then call the Google Play Developer API to get the full state.
You create a Pub/Sub topic, let Google's publisher account post to it, add a push subscription that points at your server (or poll with a client library), and enter the topic in Play Console. A subscription notification has a type such as SUBSCRIPTION_PURCHASED, SUBSCRIPTION_RENEWED, SUBSCRIPTION_IN_GRACE_PERIOD, SUBSCRIPTION_ON_HOLD, SUBSCRIPTION_PAUSED, SUBSCRIPTION_CANCELED, SUBSCRIPTION_REVOKED or SUBSCRIPTION_EXPIRED. One-time product and voided purchase notifications are separate message kinds.
A notification does not carry the complete purchase. Google tells you to call purchases.subscriptionsv2.get with the purchase token and treat that response as the source of truth. Do not store state from the message alone. Because a message can arrive late or twice, make your handler safe to run more than once.
RevenueDot gives each Google Play app a notification URL for a Pub/Sub push subscription. For every message it stores the raw payload once by message ID and re-reads the purchase from the Play Developer API. It answers 200 for handled, duplicate and invalid-token messages, and 500 or 503 for temporary failures so that Pub/Sub delivers again. A daily voided-purchases check backs up refund messages.
Sources: Android Developers: Real-time developer notifications reference · Android Developers: Prepare your app and backend for billing · Android Developers: Subscription lifecycle
FAQ
Real-time developer notifications (RTDN): questions people ask
Do RTDN replace calling the Google Play Developer API?
No. A notification only says that something changed. You still call the API with the purchase token to read the full state.
Do I need Pub/Sub?
Yes. Google Play delivers RTDN through Cloud Pub/Sub, either pushed to a URL you set or polled with a client library.
Which Apple feature is the equivalent?
App Store Server Notifications V2. Apple's messages already contain signed transaction data, while Google's contain only the purchase token and type.
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