Is there anyway to test subscription items of google in-app billing without making their state active in google play console?

Question

I have a problem with testing subscription items in my app. Regarding the In-App billing documents that I read and stack-overflow posts, as far as I understood, for testing Subscription Items in In-app billing we have two options:

1. Solo testing (Which is not possible for subscription items). So this Item is not possible for us.

   Google docs: Note: Static responses cannot be used to test subscriptions.

2. The product Id which is trying to purchase should be active in Google play console. Since we can not make them active because production users will see those items, we need to find another way.

   Google docs: To be available for purchase, a product needs to be active, and its app needs to be published.

Questions:

1. Is there any way to test subscription items without making them active in Google play console?
2. Is there any sandbox mode just like apple in-app purchase or Amazon in-app purchase?

Answer 1

If a subscription item is 'active' in the play console, users wouldn't be able to see it unless your app specifically queries for the sku (the product ID that was set in the Play Console).

For example, in the official play billing sample app, we store all the skus that are defined in the play console and only query for the skus we have defined in the app code. This means that we can add additional in-app products in the play console without production users seeing it as long as the code that queries for the products isn't shipped to production as well.