"How to APK mine Pokémon GO"

#PokemonGO: APK mining, or data mining, is the process of exploring and reading the code behind Pokémon GO. I been doing this for a while already, and so have others, namely TheSilphRoad. This is the first and, as far as I know, the only step by step guide on the Internet on how to do it.For this guide, you will need the following:a zip tool, like 7zipa copy of the latest Pokémon GO APK, which is available at APK Mirrora good text editor with support for RegEX like Sublime Text, Notepad++ or Atoma Hex editor that can convert from Hex to ASCII, like HxDIn this guide you will learn the following:open the APK and extract Pokémon GO metadatadecode the metadata file from HEX to ASCII formatunderstand and remove useless parts of the decoded fileand finally: data mine and explore the code behind Pokémon GO using your text editors Search and Replace with RegEX (regular expressions)If this sounds difficult, or even dangerous, don’t be afraid – it’s none of that! It’s just a rather lengthy process that sounds harder than it really is! Let’s start! 🙂1. Extracting Pokémon GO metadataThis step is very simple. Download the APK and open it with 7zip (or any other zip tool). The 0.55.0 APK that was used for this guide is around 81.4Mb large and includes around 7Mb of metadata that’s interesting for exploration.The metadata file we’re looking for is situated here:assets\bin\Data\Managed\Metadata\global-metadata.datJust drag and drop the file outside of the archive. At this point, we are going to use HxD so make sure you installed it, or if not, install it now.2. Decoding the global-metadata.dat to ASCIIAfter extracting the metadata file from the APK, open HxD and open the metadata file with it. Make sure your decoding configuration says the following:http://ift.tt/2kDRGG1 select all from the right column and copy it into a text editor of your choice. We use Sublime Text 3 due to high performance and good RegEX support.3. Understanding and trimming the decoded metadata fileAt this point, you’re close to starting your data mine, however, there is still some infrastructure work to do. First, we need to understand the file and remove useless parts.The decoded file is structured in the following fashion:short “dotted” preamble, can be removed completelyexception log, can be removed completelycode dumps and metadata, do not removevery long “dotted” trail, can be removed completelyYou should remove these parts of the file, or copy the number 3. part to a new file, as it will improve performance and speed of mining dramatically. You will recognise the dotted areas as they are unreadable and have a huge amount of dotted strings:http://ift.tt/2knNtHY for the exception log, it runs all the way from the end of first “dotted” area to the place where “mscorlib.dll” appears. Our process is to remove the first “dotted” area then find “mscorlib.dll” and remove everything before that.The interesting part of the file is now yours.Let’s recap this step:Remove everything from start of file to first occurrence of “mscorlib.dll”. Remove everything that looks like a dotted area from the bottom of the file.4. Formatting the fileAnd now, the fun part! In order to understand the file, we first need to format it using RegEXs! Open Search and Replace in your text editor, turn on RegEX mode and turn on Case Sensitivity. This is how it looks in Sublime Text 3:http://ift.tt/2kDXgbJ now, use the following expressions to format the file:Find WhatReplace WhatResult\.get\n.getEvery string starting with .get is now in a new line\.set\n.setEvery string starting with .set is now in a new line\.ACTIVITY\n.ACTIVITYFormat Activities in new lines\.ITEM_\n.ITEM_Format Item, Item effects and categories in new lines\.BADGE\n.BADGEFormat Badges in new lines\.V0\n.V0Format Moves and Pokemon families in new linesIn all honesty, you can format the file even further, but using these few expressions helps me get the gist in the initial data mining. If you’re interested in RegEX more, take a look at regexr where you can learn and explore regular expressions further.5. Finding the truthAnd now, we are here. We’ve successfully extracted the metadata, decoded it and formatted it for exploration. Where do you go from here is on you. Read, explore, learn, bookmark and be wise.http://ift.tt/2knS7G1 now possess a powerful set of information. Use it wisely.http://ift.tt/2kE5ZKR guide was first published on the GO Hub, if you don't like ads, read it here. Argh... I suck at reddit formatting, but here it is, I tried my best. You should read my other guides on TSR - How to obtain and decode GM | GM Decoder | Creepy Pikachu | Turtle tax: 🐢...🐢...🐢... via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2knnX5P