How To Display App Version Inside a Submodule

Usually, getting the current version code of your app is as simple as BuildConfig.VERSION_CODE. Easy! However, this doesn’t work if you want to retrieve your app’s version code whilst inside a submodule. Instead, the submodule‘s version code is returned.

The solution is to use the package manager to get your application’s PackageInfo. Next, the versionCode and versionName can be retrieved (if in a fragment, replace this with activity?):

try {
    val info = this.packageManager?.getPackageInfo(this.packageName, 0)
    val versionName = info?.versionName
    val versionCode = info?.versionCode
} catch (e: PackageManager.NameNotFoundException) {
    Timber.e(e)
}

Note that whilst technically a NameNotFoundException can be thrown, since you’re looking up your own app it’s a safe bet that it exists on the device! Additionally, there is a lot of other information available from the PackageInfo object returned, with no extra permissions required.