Signing apk from ionic

This post will show you how to sign your apk manually, from ionic framework for release.

Recently I signed my first apk from ionic and ran into some issues that will be ironed out in this blog.

1. You will need to have the sdk and jdk / jdr tools installed.

2. Have a ionic project with the Android platform installed.

LETS START

You need to build your app using below in the cmd line then move that project-release.apk file into this directory

 ionic build android --release

exampleApp\platforms\android

MAKING THE KEYSTORE

You then need to make the key store in that file and write in all the info. Do not lose the key file and keep a record of the information.

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

SIGN THE APK

Now we have to sign the apk

jarsigner -verbose -sigalg SHA1withRSA -digestalg SHA1 -keystore my-release-key.keystore HelloWorld-release-unsigned.apk alias_name

now it is signed.

ZIPPING UP

Now zip up the files to create a project.apk find Zip align tool found here(Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\build-tools\21.1.2) might be different for you put it into exampleApp\platforms\android. Then write this in the cli

zipalign -v 4 HelloWorld-release-unsigned.apk HelloWorld.apk

You are finished and now should have a exampleApp.apk file in the platforms android folder

TROUBLE SHOOTING

Some of the cli cmds may not work and for this you need to change your path in
computer>advanced settings> environment variables
 and then find path and add a new and type in the directory path for your key-tool etc this tells the cmd line where to find the exc files etc.

GIT of files I used for this tutorial here

OTHER WAYS

There is other ways of signing apks and here is a list of a few good links. Bear in mind some of these might be old and to find solutions you have to look in the comments.

Ionic doc 

ionic tutorial by sjerd 

tutorial by Nic Raboy