Checking Android app publish status in Google play

After publishing an Android app in the Google Developer Console, I wonder how long it will take Google to list it the Play store.

At first I manually checked Google Play every now and then.  Eventually I wrote a BASH script to do just that:

appid='com.amgcomputing.website'
data=`curl -s https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=$appid`
echo $data | grep -q "What's New"
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    espeak "application is published"
fi

Here is what it does:

1. Ask curl to retrieve the search result from Google Play, using the reverse domain app id as the search key.

2. Ask grep to find a text string "What's New" in the search result.  If found, it is safe to assume the app is now listed.

3. Ask the computer to let me know verbally.

The -s option of curl and the -q option of grep just tell curl and grep not to write any output to the screen.

I then schedule the BASH script in crontab to run every five minutes. Now I will know the moment the app is listed in Google Play.