Deploy an Ionic Android app to Google Play Store - rotati/wiki GitHub Wiki

Set environment variables

In your Ionic project run the following command (replace 'environment' with your desired environment, staging, production etc).

gulp replace --env environment

Follow the instructions from the Ionic developer guides

Note: Make sure to include the 'environment' in the name of the generated apk file. For example: 'MyProjectStaging.apk'

Ionic Developer Guides

Continue to customize the store front as shown in the Android developer guide

Android Developer Guide

Publishing Ionic application to Play Store

Assume that you have ionic app call MyApp. This document claim to deploy your ionic app to the google play store after you point your base url in your ionic app to your rails staging or production API.

Build a release apk

Remove cordova console plug which is already install by default ionic

cordova plugin rm cordova-plugin-console

Build a release android APK by command

ionic build --release android

After ionic finish you get a unsigned APK in folder platforms/android/build/outputs/apk (Some computer will be in platforms/android/ant-build)

Example: CordovaApp-release-unsigned.apk

Sign key to unsigned apk.

Generate our private key using the keytool

If you already have your keystore please skip this step

keytool -genkey -v -keystore my-release-key.keystore -alias alias_name -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000

it will prompt you to create the password for the keystore. then answer all of the question. After that you will have a file in you current directory call my-release-key.keystore

**Note : ** please keep that file safe because you will need it when you want to update your app

Sign apk file using jarsigner

jarsigner -verbose -sigalg SHA1withRSA -digestalg SHA1 -keystore my-release-key.keystore path_to_your_unsigned_apk/Cordova-release-unsigned.apk alias_name

Using zip align tool to optimize the APK

Zip align locate in your android path : /path/to/Android/sdk/build-tools/VERSION

go to your zipalign path

./zip -v 4 /path-to-your-unsigned-apk/CordovaApp-release-unsigned.apk /path-to-your-destination-apk/MyApp-Staging.apk