HOW TO CREATE A HYBRID APP WITH ANDROID STUDIO?
There has been an
exponential rise in the purchase of android devices. With this growth of
android devices, the demand for the apps is constantly increasing.
What are hybrid apps?
Just like websites on the Internet,
Hybrid apps are designed and developed using the web technologies like HTML,
CSS and JavaScript. Hybrid apps are similar to any other app on the phone. You
can install and download them from the app store. The key difference is that
hybrid apps are hosted inside a native application that uses mobile platform’s
web view. This helps it to access all the capabilities like camera,
accelerometer, sensors, contacts etc.
Android Studio is an easy
to use Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that is used to develop android
and hybrid apps. One can develop hybrid apps by following these simple steps:-
Design your Application
The first baby step towards building hybrid apps is
designing your project. Before you start the development process, it is advisable
to make sure that you have all the pre-requisites of the development process.
It is essential to have access to the features
available in the browser if you are creating a pure HTML5 application. Make
sure that you have all the pre-requisites in place. For example make Cordova
CLI and the android SDK tools ready before going into the development phase.
You will have to install Node.js before installing Cordova CLI.
Now, to install Cordova CLI, run the following
commands
sudo
npm install -g cordova
The
next step is to download the Android SDK tools which you can download by
clicking the following link…
HTML5 Mobile Framework Application
HTML5 Framework
is the building block for creating an HTML 5 application. Another major tool
JavaScript enables you to add animations, show/hide things on a website. Now in
the next step, you can edit the index page of your website
Testing Application through Browser
HTML5 comes with
an advantage that you can test the application through your local server
browser. You can easily access your application by going through the following
URL replacing MyHybridApp with the name of your app
If
you are a chrome user, then you have added advantages. For example you can use
Chrome DevTools to debug your application. You can even check the
responsiveness of the app by clicking of the mobile icon on the top left side
of the debugging page.
You
can debug your application by inspecting the elements and using features like
console, Network, source, application etc.
Packaging the
application
To
package the application, you will have to use third party applications like
Xamarin and PhoneGap. Now, what these third party applications do is – they
package the application in a native wrapper which acts as a bridge between the
native API and your app. The application is loaded into the web view by the
third party applications like PhoneGap. And this web view displays the
application to the users.
Now,
after the packaging of the application is done, we can generate a release
version of the APK
Cordova
build –release
When
we have generated a release version, you can find your apk in the following
location platforms/android/ant-build/MyHybridApp-release-unsigned.apk
To
submit the apk in the app store, simply sign in and submit it.
The Testing Process
We know that we
can test and debug our application using the chrome DevTools like console,
Network, sources, application etc. But do you know that you can debug the
application without using chrome development tools? We will have to run the
application on actual device to test the hybrid app using native API.
One of the options
on phone to debug app is GapDebug. By using this Gap Debug you can install .ipa
files for IOS or .apk for android. It provides a debugging interface in which
any kind of change in the interface will reflect the change in the application.
Distribution Process
Before you can
launch the application on the play store, you will need to sign your
application on app store. The pre-requisite for signing your application on the
play store is to generate a keystore.
To create a
keystore, one can use Java Keytool utility. This utility already comes with the
standard JDK distribution and can be located at %JAVA_HOME%\bin. In windows,
this can be found at C:\Program
Files\Java\jre7\bin.
Final Process
After creating a
keystore, you can easily sign in and users can install the uploaded app on the
play store.
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