How To Publish Android Apps to Google Play

How To Publish Android Apps to Google Play

The process involving publishing a Android app to the Google Play web store is fairly easy. I prepared this guide as a checklist of steps you need to accomplish the process to allow you to slip through the review process and into the web store as easily as possible.

Task OverviewThe first place to start, if you haven't already done so, is to package your app into a apk file. You need an apk file no matter the platform used to create Android. In this guide I will provide these information to produce an apk from Flash Builder (Eclipse) and the native Android IDE (Eclipse).

During the signing process you will need to sign your apk file. No Android app can be published to the Google Play store unless it is signed. In contrast to Apple iTunes signing policy, you can self sign your Android apps. However you cannot use the debug certificate.

Once this task is complete,you will need to upload the app to the Google Play. This involves a couple a related tasks. If you don't have a developer profile, you will have to create one and also a checkout Merchant account if you plan on selling your app in Google Play. You will then need to create an app profile which will include your apk.

Task 1 : Package an app Android (Eclipse)The first that we will tackle is the apk. This is the archive required by Google Play. This task includes the following sub tasks:

Export project as Android Mobile package

Generating a keystore

Signing the app

Finalizing the apk packaging

Step 1: Generating keystore

Before you can export a signed apk filed (you can export an unsigned apk but you won't be able to upload to the Google Play store), you need to create a keystore certificate.

You can download an Eclipse plugin to generate your keystores directly from Eclipse or you can use the keytool that ships with the Java SDK or JRE. you can either use keytool or jarsigner to sign your apk file.

If you didn't specify a path for the keystore file, the keystore file will be saved to the Java/bin directory, otherwise it will be stored where you specified as in my example

For this example, I will use the Keytool application from the command line in Java. To create a new keystore follow these instructions:

Open the keytool from the command line. If your java_home and path are not set, you will have to navigate to the bin sub folder of your Java SDK or JRE

Compose the command line command using the above mentioned keytool commands. As an example for my rotateMeter Android app, I am using the following command to generate my keystore:You will be prompted to enter and confirm a password

You will also be prompted to enter your full name

You will need to provide an organization unit. This can be an arbitrary but meaningful name. Only the first 8 characters will be used.

You will then need to enter the name of your organization

Next enter your location, city and state or province

Then you will need to enter your 2 character country code

Once the tool has gathered all the needed information, it will display the information on screen for your verification and will prompt you to accept or refuse

Once you accept the input data, you will need to re enter your password and the keytool will create the keystore file for you.

Step 2: Export project as Android Mobile package

Once you have the keystore, you can begin the process of packaging your app for the Google Play store. To successfully upload your app, you will to package your app as a apk archive. The apk is an archive that is similar to a jar (Java).