How to use GooglePlayServices libs in Native Extension of Android AIR app?

Question

I am trying to use some features of Google Play Services lib but I could not make it work. I have added the reference to the google play service libs to the manifest file (from Flash Builder)
<application android:enabled="true">
<meta-data  android:name="com.google.android.gms.version"
                android:value="@integer/google_play_services_version" />
<activity android:excludeFromRecents="false">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN"/>
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER"/>
    </intent-filter>
</activity>
</application>
In my ANE, I have added the reference to the source of google-play-services_lib, but when I tried to call the FREFunction to check the availability of Google Play Service
@Override
public FREObject call(FREContext context, FREObject[] args){
     boolean result = false;
     try{
      Activity activitiy = context.getActivity();
      activityContext = activitiy.getBaseContext();
          result = isGooglePlayServiceExists();
     }catch(IllegalStateException e){
      Log.e(AneUtils.TAG, "Failed to get AIR current activity", e);
     FREObject obj = null;
    try{
        obj = FREObject.newObject(result);
    }catch(FREWrongThreadException e){
        Log.e(AneUtils.TAG, "Failed to create FREObject from [" + result + "]");
    return obj;
private boolean isGooglePlayServiceExists(Context activityContext){
    int googlePlayServicesCheck = -1;
    try{
        googlePlayServicesCheck = GooglePlayServicesUtil.isGooglePlayServicesAvailable(activityContext);
    }catch(Exception e){
        Log.e(AneUtils.TAG, "Error getting googlePlayService state",e);
    if(googlePlayServicesCheck == ConnectionResult.SUCCESS){
         return true;
    return false;
The ANE crashed at the line GooglePlayServicesUtil.isGooglePlayServicesAvailable(activityContext) so I really doubted the Google Play Service libs was not added.
Has anyone successfully imported the Google Play Serivce libs into Adobe AIR Android app?
Any advice or help will be appreciated. Thank you.

Answer 1

hey sshk5,
I have managed to make it work. The solution is quite simple, i will explain the steps below
1. Download the latest Android SDK from ADT (including the latest version of GooglePlay lib)
2. Check the version number of Google Play lib ( for example 412312....) something and in your FlashBuilder project, make sure you use the  exact number like
<meta-data  android:name="com.google.android.gms.version" android:value="412312" />
3. Use tool to merge the googlelib jar file with your native extension before importing the native extension to FlashBuilder. If you do not want to use any other tool, you can use the AIR 4.0 which will allow you to use commandline to merge jars (and even dependency resources)
Hope it helps