Hi all,
Amazingly, I can’t find a single discussion about this in the forum, nor anything in the docs, except for this line:
“Wappler allows you to build and publish amazing mobile apps directly to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store with a single click. So simple and yet, so powerful!”
which is here: https://docs.wappler.io/t/mobile-apps/2839
So - does Wappler include the submissions? Or just the creation of the binaries?
Regards,
Andy
The projects created need to be signed before the applications are published in the “app store” or “play store”. It can be very nice to sign the projects in the wappler and to keep the necessary keys and secrets!
Hi Blakey,
No Wappler can not publish directly to the App Store. I don’t think any software or cloud platform does that all for you, correct me if I am wrong please?
You can build your applications in Wappler but for signing and Play Store you will have to learn a little about the Cordova and the build process. To upload any app to the Play Store it first has to be signed. This would be a great feature for Wappler, signing abilities @George @Teodor!
Just to follow up and outline the process for you, from our perspective and work-flow. We use Wappler for all design work for that side, and also for the data API via Server Connect (Two Projects, one for design, one for data). We also use Android Studio and Visual Studio Code for aiding in debugging and as an extra work-space for open consoles instead of cluttering Wappler. We connect the Design Project to the Data Project by simple picking your Server Actions from the drop-down list (when you add a SC Action to any page you select it, you can pick from any other Projects, in our case it is the APP-Data Project we want to connect to).
Now some idiosyncrasies explained, well not quite, but quirks we have learned over time. The Play Store will not accept debug builds, or unsigned builds. So you will need to build through the terminal using the following command:
cordova build android --release
This will build a release version of the app. To run this app on your device (non emulated) you will need to first unlock the Developer Mode on the device:
Now on to signing the app. It is very simple to do and rather than me explain it here and repeat an already documented process please take a quick look at the following tutorial on how to do this. Once set-up you will not need to do anything. It will sign the app upon building for you.
https://haensel.pro/apache-cordova/cordova-create-a-signed-release-apk-easy-howto
It is easy to set-up and if I were to rate it in difficulty from 1 - 10 I’d say it’s a hard pushed 2. Even for new users. You can then use the same key store in Android Studio if you wish to do so.
So that is release and signing covered at a basic level. I’d suggest smashing out a simple app first. Just a Bootstrap page displaying data and running on a device (emulation is painfully slow so always run on a device to speed up the pace).
CORS. Occasionally you may bump in to Cross Origin issues. If you do search the forum for CORS and you should find plenty of answers on the subject as it has been well covered. You may also need to update your Gradle Version which is also covered here on the forum.
Hope that helps Blakey!
For anything else please feel free to ask and don’t be embarrassed about your questions. We are all here to help out each other.
Good luck with your Project!
Thanks both for clarifying, and the great help. I’ll see how I get on!