Getting Started with File Dumps
42matters generates file data dumps of the mobile app meta-data of apps and charts available on Google Play and iTunes and makes it available to its customers for download.
Access Credentials
In order to obtain your Access Credentials, please read the File Dumps page or contact us.
Note: Do not share your access credentials publicly such as in emails, source control, chats etc. This
will lead to having your credentials disabled.
Authentication
Clients require AWS S3 credentials in order to obtain the data files. Your credentials are available for you
in your 42matters account under Launchpad.
To make sure that the credentials are working well try out with a tool such as Cyberduck. After installing the software,
launch it and click on Open Connection -> choose Amazon S3 from the dropdown.
Enter Server external.42matters.com.s3.amazonaws.com
and the access credentials from your account.

After successfully authenticating with the server you will be able to navigate to the target path locations, which
we've supplied in the on-boarding email.

Automation with AWS CLI
Here we show an example of how to use awscli
to list bucket's contents and download a standard playstore dump for a particular date.
# 1) Install awscli - https://aws.amazon.com/cli/
pip install awscli --upgrade --user
# 2) Configure awscli with the credentials we've provided in your account.
aws configure --profile YOUR_COMPANY
# 3) list the contents of a folder
aws s3 ls s3://external.42matters.com/1/42apps/v0.1/production/playstore/lookup/ --profile YOUR_COMPANY
# 4) list the contents of the timestamped folder
aws s3 ls s3://external.42matters.com/1/42apps/v0.1/production/playstore/lookup/2018-08-16/ --profile YOUR_COMPANY
# 5) download the file locally
aws s3 cp s3://external.42matters.com/1/42apps/v0.1/production/playstore/lookup/2018-08-16/playstore-00.tar.gz playstore.tar.gz --profile YOUR_COMPANY
# 6) unpack the file
tar xvfz playstore.tar.gz
Automation with Python Boto3
In order to programmatically download the feed files use a client library for AWS S3 in the language of your
choice. For Python we recommend Boto3 or S3Transfer tool for bulk downloads.
Here we show an example of how to use Boto3
with S3Transfer to download a standard playstore dump for a particular date. This code snippet is written in
Python.
import boto3
from boto3.s3.transfer import S3Transfer
s3_client = boto3.client('s3', aws_access_key_id=aws_access_key_id, aws_secret_access_key=aws_secret_access_key,use_ssl=True)
s3_transfer = S3Transfer(s3_client)
s3_transfer.download_file(bucket='external.42matters.com', key="1/42apps/v0.1/production/playstore/lookup/2018-08-16/playstore-00.tar.gz", filename='playstore.tar.gz')
Examine file dump data
A good command-line tool for playing with the line-separated json files is JQ,
here a couple of terminal commands to get you started after you unpack the files:
Print first 100 app title for GPlay apps
head -n 100 playstore-00 | jq -c '.title' -r
Print all titles for iTunes apps
head -n 100 itunes-00 | jq -c '.trackCensoredName' -r
Last Modified: 29 Apr 2020