Check if an application is installed on the device

This is quite embarrassing... I've used to use the following to perform that check:

private static final String GooglePlayStorePackageName = "com.google.market";

void someMethod() {
    packageManager = getApplication().getPackageManager();
    List<PackageInfo> packages = packageManager.getInstalledPackages(PackageManager.GET_UNINSTALLED_PACKAGES);
    for (PackageInfo packageInfo : packages) {
        if (packageInfo.packageName.equals(GooglePlayStorePackageName)) {
            googlePlayStoreInstalled = true;
            break;
        }
    } 
}

Since I cannot stand my own stupidity, and I love to lecture people about how amazing exceptions are and how stupid it is to ignore them, I found that I have done it as well, although not in the same context I lecture people...

Following is the proper code to check whether an application is installed on your device:

protected final boolean isPackageInstalled(String packageName) {
    try {
        application.getPackageManager().getPackageInfo(packageName, 0);
    } catch (NameNotFoundException e) {
        return false;
    }
    return true;
}

As you can see, I've ignored the fact there is a method which throws an exception when it could not find the requested package, which is so dumb of me.

So now I wrapped the method with a boolean returning method, and do use the exception to determine whether the application package is installed or not.