Android

Create a Google Cloud Platform service account as described in the Gradle Play Publisher documentation. The plugin will use this account to perform release activities in the Google Play Console.

When creating a service account, you will get the account's private key in a .json file. Save the file on your computer. You will need it in the next steps.

Make sure you provide the account sufficient permissions for the app: Google Play Console | Users and Permissions | Invite new users. In our example, we will publish the app to the internal testing track, therefore the account needs the Manage testing track releases permission.

Generate an upload key for signing your application (in our example, we will use Play App Signing). If you already have the key, skip this step. To generate the key, you can use:

• Android Studio. Learn more

• The keytool command-line tool. For example:

  keytool -genkey -v -keystore uploadkey.jks -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000 -alias my-alias

When creating a key, you should specify the following information (you will need it in the next steps):

• Key store file name: the .jks file that will store the key.

• Key store password: the password to the .jks key storage.

• Key alias: the name of the private key.

• Key password: the password to the private key.

For security reasons, we will store app private signing key data and the Google service account key in the Secrets & Parameters storage.

Save all sensitive data as secrets and parameters:

1. First, let's convert the binary .jks key store file to the hex format. This way we will be able to save it as a secret. During the build, the Automation script will covert the hex secret back to the binary .jks file. To convert the key store file you can use the xxd tool (a part of the xxd package):

   xxd -plain upload_key.jks > upload_key.hex

   If you don't have the xxd tool, run sudo apt get install xxd first.

2. In Space, open the required project.

3. Open Settings | Secrets & Parameters and create a new secret.

4. Open the upload_key.hex file, copy its contents, and paste them as a secret value.

5. In the same way, convert the Google service account key and create a secret for it:

   xxd -plain google_sa_key.json > google_sa_key.hex

   Actually, it's not necessary to convert .json to hex as it's simply plain text. Nevertheless, to avoid copy-paste encoding issues, it's better to store it as hex and convert back to plain text during the build.

6. Create secrets for the key store password and the key password.

7. Create a parameter for the key alias (it doesn't require secure storage).

8. As a result, there will be four secrets and one parameter in the project's Secrets & Parameters:

   

In the project-level build.gradle file, configure application signing. For security reasons, we will access key data stored in the Secrets & Parameters storage using environment variables. For example:

In the project-level build.gradle file, configure the Gradle Play Publisher plugin. For security reasons, we will store the service account key in the Secrets & Parameters storage and create it using the Automation script. For more information on how to configure the plugin, refer to the plugin documentation.

If you want to automatically change the app version depending on the build run number, change the versionCode and versionName parameters in the project-level build.gradle. For example, if we want the versionCode to be equal to the build number and versionName to be 1.0.$build_number:

The resulting project build.gradle might look like follows:

In the project root, create the .space.kts automation script:

Notes:

• We use a custom Docker image that meets the following requirements.

• In our example, we build and publish an AAB. If you want to build and publish an APK instead, change the line ./gradlew publishBundle to ./gradlew publishApk.

Run the job. After the job successfully finishes, check Google Play Console. It must contain the uploaded application draft:

If needed, you can configure Gradle Play Publisher to automate all other release tasks, like uploading app metadata (screenshots, descriptions, and so on), promoting app artifacts, working with product flavors, and much more. For more information, refer to the Gradle Play Publisher documentation.

Create a Google Cloud Platform service account as described in the fastlane documentation. The tool will use this account to perform release activities in the Google Play Console.

When creating a service account, you will get the account's private key in a .json file. Save the file on your computer. You will need it in the next steps.

Make sure you provide the account sufficient permissions for the app: Google Play Console | Users and Permissions | Invite new users. In our example, we will publish the app to the internal testing track, therefore the account needs the Manage testing track releases permission.

Generate an upload key for signing your application (in our example, we will use Play App Signing). If you already have the key, skip this step. To generate the key, you can use:

• Android Studio. Learn more

• The keytool command-line tool. For example:

  keytool -genkey -v -keystore uploadkey.jks -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -validity 10000 -alias my-alias

When creating a key, you should specify the following information (you will need it in the next steps):

• Key store file name: the .jks file that will store the key.

• Key store password: the password to the .jks key storage.

• Key alias: the name of the private key.

• Key password: the password to the private key.

For security reasons, we will store app private signing key data and the Google service account key in the Secrets & Parameters storage.

Save all sensitive data as secrets and parameters:

1. First, let's convert the binary .jks key store file to the hex format. This way we will be able to save it as a secret. During the build, the Automation script will covert the hex secret back to the binary .jks file. To convert the key store file you can use the xxd tool (a part of the xxd package):

   xxd -plain upload_key.jks > upload_key.hex

   If you don't have the xxd tool, run sudo apt get install xxd first.

2. In Space, open the required project.

3. Open Settings | Secrets & Parameters and create a new secret.

4. Open the upload_key.hex file, copy its contents, and paste them as a secret value.

5. In the same way, convert the Google service account key and create a secret for it:

   xxd -plain google_sa_key.json > google_sa_key.hex

   Actually, it's not necessary to convert .json to hex as it's simply plain text. Nevertheless, to avoid copy-paste encoding issues, it's better to store it as hex and convert back to plain text during the build.

6. Create secrets for the key store password and the key password.

7. Create a parameter for the key alias (it doesn't require secure storage).

8. As a result, there will be four secrets and one parameter in the project's Secrets & Parameters:

   

In the project-level build.gradle file, configure application signing. For security reasons, we will access key data stored in the Secrets & Parameters storage using environment variables. For example:

If you want to automatically change the app version depending on the build run number, change the versionCode and versionName parameters in the project-level build.gradle. For example, if we want the versionCode to be equal to the build number and versionName to be 1.0.$build_number:

The resulting project build.gradle might look like follows:

Configure fastlane. In fastlane/Fastfile, add a new lane:

This lane first builds an application AAB and then uploads it to the internal testing track.

In the fastlane/Appfile file, specify the path to the Google Play service account key (relative to the project root). During the build, we will get the key from a project secret and put it to the root directory. So, we can specify any name here. For example, the Appfile could look like follows:

In the project root, create the .space.kts automation script:

Notes:

• We use a custom Docker image that meets the following requirements.

• We restore the service account key to the google_sa_key.json file in the root directory (the same file we specified in fastlane/Appfile).

Run the job. After the job successfully finishes, check Google Play Console. It must contain the uploaded application draft:

If needed, you can configure fastlane to automate all other release tasks, like uploading app metadata (screenshots, descriptions, and so on), promoting app artifacts, working with product flavors, and much more. For more information, refer to the fastlane documentation.