Submitting to the Google Play and Amazon Stores

Prepare your App

In this TechNote, we'll cover what you need to do to submit your app to Google Play and the Amazon Store. Submitting your app is fairly straightforward. The only hard part is signing your app: fortunately, PhoneGap Build makes this much easier.

The method used will be to take an AppStudio app, use PhoneGap Build to produce a .apk file, then submit that to the stores.

You can use this procedure for any AppStudio project. It will also work if your project uses the PhoneGap API. It will not work if you are using third party PhoneGap plug ins: for those, you will need to use the PhoneGap SDK method.

Start by testing your app as much as possible while it is still a web app. It will be much easier to make changes, fixes and improvements at this stage.

Create the Signing Key

The signing key is a small file which identifies the creator. It will get built into the .apk file so the developer who built the app can be identified. Since the information in the signing key is all supplied by the developer, it really doesn't provide any security. It will make sure that updates to an app are generated by the same user.

Install the Java Development Kit

The signing key is created by a small program called keytool. It is included in the Java Development Kit. If you do not have this installed, get it from Oracle's Java Development Kit Download page

Open a CMD or Terminal session

On Windows, open a cmd window and go to c:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_25\bin.

=== Use KeyTool to create the keystore file

Enter this command, replacing 'KitchenSink' with the name of your app.

keytool -genkey -v -keystore KitchenSink.keystore -alias KitchenSink -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000

A series of questions will then appear:

c:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_25\bin>keytool -genkey -v -keystore KitchenSink.k
eystore -alias KitchenSink -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000
Enter keystore password:
Re-enter new password:
What is your first and last name?
  [Unknown]:  Eric Cartman
What is the name of your organizational unit?
  [Unknown]:
What is the name of your organization?
  [Unknown]:  South Park
What is the name of your City or Locality?
  [Unknown]:  South Park
What is the name of your State or Province?
  [Unknown]:  Colorado
What is the two-letter country code for this unit?
  [Unknown]:  US
Is CN=Eric Cartman, OU=Unknown, O=South Park, L=South Park, ST=Colorado, C=US co
rrect?
  [no]:  yes

Generating 2,048 bit RSA key pair and self-signed certificate (SHA256withRSA) wi
th a validity of 10,000 days
        for: CN=Eric Cartman, OU=Unknown, O=South Park, L=South Park, ST=Colorad
o, C=US
Enter key password for <KitchenSink>
        (RETURN if same as keystore password):

(tracing appears as the file is generated)

[Storing KitchenSink.keystore]