Hi everyone, and welcome back.
Today, we're actually going to try
to upload our application to the Google Play Store.
Since we're doing this for Windows, unfortunately, you're not going to be able
to upload the application to the Apple Store,
but you are going to be able to upload it to Google Play Store.
Now, if you want to make your application available on iOS as well,
you might have to retake this section, especially the Firebase part,
and this video is not going to be applicable to you.
You're going to have to open up the new
videos that are applicable to macOS and follow the suggestions there.
Now, if you're decided on using the Windows and you just want to upload
the Android application, then you can follow me here.
First, you're going to have to go to play.google.com
and log in with your account that's been verified.
We have talked about the verification
importance when trying to upload the application already.
So if your account is still not verified yet, please make sure that you get it
verified before trying to upload your application.
Otherwise, just follow me here and click on Creating a new application.
You probably have no applications uploaded.
I do have some applications,
but it doesn't really matter as long as we can create a new app.
Let's create the new application and let's call it AltruDonateAppVache.
You can call your application whatever you want.
I'm going to say that it's an app and it
is going to be free and I'm going to accept all of these items.
Then I'm going to click on Create the Application.
Now my application has been created
and there are some tasks that I need to complete.
First of all, I need to complete the tasks
for testing so we can just select the testers.
Here you're going to see that I have some groups created.
You should also create a group for yourself.
To create a group, you can just create email list.
I'm going to call it myself 3.0. Then I'm going to add my email here.
Click on Enter.
The email address is added right here as
you see, and I'm going to click on Save Changes.
I'm going to create this email list
and it's going to be automatically selected for me.
All I need to do here to make sure
that this task is complete is just click on Save.
Great.
Now that this is completed, we're not going to create a new release
until we finish up some other items and to see what else we have to finish up,
just click on dashboard and we're going to move on to setting up our application.
These are the tasks that we need to complete.
Let's start with the first one.
Here we have to set the privacy policy.
This is something that you should do once
you're actually going to be creating the application.
That's going to be visible to the world.
But so far, I'm just going to use
my website here and I'm going to pretend that this is where my privacy policy is.
I'm going to click on Save.
I'm going to go back.
Now I'm going to click on App Access and complete this one as well.
I'm going to say that all my functionality
in my app is available without any excess restrictions.
I'm going to click on Save again and I'm going to go back to the dashboard.
Here we have already two steps out of 12 completed.
I'm going to click on Ads,
and I'm going to say that no, my application does not contain ads.
Click on Save, go back to dashboard.
Now let's go to content rating and start the questionnaire.
Here I'm going to say that my email address is apps@gridgum.com.
I'm going to say I'm not making an app that is a game.
I'm not making a social application.
It's all other app types.
I'm going to click on Next.
I will say that no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
To all of these questions, I'm going to click on Save, Next, and then Save.
Great. Our content rating has been completed.
Now we want to go to target audience, and I'm going to say it's for 18 and over
so that Google doesn't ask me for more explanations.
I will say that no, my application will not unintentionally appeal to children.
Next and Save, and this is completed.
Let's go back to dashboard and click on the news apps,
and I'm going to say that no, my application is not a news app.
Click on Save, go back to dashboard.
Let's scroll down a little bit.
Here we're going to see that there is a special questionnaire for COVID-19.
Let's click on that.
We're going to say that no,
my application is not going to be tracing any COVID-19 status.
I'm going to click on Save, go back to dashboard.
Then let's click on Data safety.
Here, let's just click on Next to get started.
We're not collecting any type of user data.
I'm going to click on Save.
Let's go back to dashboard.
Here, we're asking about the government applications.
No, we're not creating a government application.
Click on No and save it.
Let's go back and then financial features.
I'm going to say that our application does none of this.
Even though it does really do some
of the financial stuff, but it's not really applicable.
So I'm going to click on Save.
Now all of these items are completed.
Let's just go to Select an app category and provide contact details.
Here I'm going to click on Edit for the first app category section.
I'm going to say that our app category is Lifestyle, and I'm going to click on Save.
Then we're going to have to update the store listing contact details.
I'm just going to fill in the only
required field, which is the email address, and I'm going to click on Save.
Great.
Now that that's done, our store settings is done.
Let's go back to the dashboard and see what our next step is.
This is set up your listing.
Let's set it up.
Our app name is already here.
Short description is going to be the donation application is created.
I'm going to copy this and I'm going to paste it multiple times
here because it doesn't really matter what I write here.
Then here we have the graphics.
If you need the graphics, just open up the resources folder.
It should have a zip file there and this is what it's going to contain.
I'm going to unzip this.
Let's do extract all.
I'm going to go inside this folder
and here you're going to see that we have a Play Store icon.
I'm going to drop it here.
Then we have the featured graphic.
This is something that I just downloaded for the sake of the size.
It doesn't really suit our application,
but it is confirming to the size that Google is requiring.
I'm just going to upload it here.
Let's scroll down.
Here you have the phone screenshots
that you can actually take directly from the simulator.
I have already taken some, so I'm just going to upload those here.
You need at least two screenshots, as I know.
We have those two screenshots and our
application is not available on tablet, so this is not important.
We can just click on Save. And great.
Now we are done with all of the items
that we needed to fill out to be able to create a first release.
And now what we want to do is follow the instructions given on the React Native
documentation that is also going to be linked.
We're actually not going to be generating APK files because those are outdated,
but we can still use some of the items that are given in the instructions here.
Now we're going to have to find where our JDK path is.
To do that, just type here and be searching for environment variables.
Here you're going to see edit the system environment variables.
Click on that and this new window will pop
up and then click on environment variables.
Here you should be able to see where Java home is.
That is where your path should be.
It's right here.
I'm going to copy this and we don't need this window anymore.
What we're going to need is running our comment prompt as an administrator.
Let's just run it as an administrator.
Make sure to do that.
Otherwise, you're going to have issues.
Let's get out of this and let's go to this path that we copied.
Just paste it here and then make sure you
go to the bin folder that is given right here.
Copy this and paste it here.
Now we're going to enter a Keystore password.
I'm going to enter numbers 1-9.
You can enter whatever you want.
I'm going to say that my name is Nata and my last name is Vacheishvili.
I'm not going to fill out the rest of the items.
At the end, I'm going to confirm and say yes, everything is correct here.
So my password was generated.
Now, if I want to find this password file, which we're going to need,
we're going to have to open up our desktop folder and let's follow this here.
We see that it's in the C disk.
Let's go to this PC and then C,
and then let's go to Program files, and then we need to go to Microsoft.
Here we're going to see our JDK and then bin folder.
We should be able to find my Keystore, upload file here.
It was just generated right now.
I'm going to drag this and put it on my desktop because we're going to need it.
Yes, I will provide the administrator
permission, so it will be copied to the desktop.
Now that I have access to this on my desktop, we're going to use this file.
What we're going to do is put this file inside Android app directory.
Open up your editor.
And then what we're going to do is open
the desktop and copy this file and paste it inside Android app directory.
So it's going to be right here.
Then once we have the Keystore file,
we can just go to the gradle.properties file.
That should be inside Android.
Then we have the gradle.properties and we're going to paste this code.
Just copy it and paste it here.
Our file is named my-upload-key.keystore.
If you change it, please make sure to go here and change it here as well.
My key alias is going to be the same.
Here, instead of this password,
I'm going to write my password, which was numbers 1-9.
Great, so I'm going to save this.
Please make sure that you don't upload
some things like this on GitHub because this is private information.
I don't really care right now for this
since you're not going to have my Keystore file.
You're not going to be able to upload the application on my Google Play Store.
But anyways, this is not something
that you should put up on your GitHub, so make sure not to do that.
Great, and now that we have this,
we have some more things to change according to this documentation.
Let's go to Android app and then build.gradle file.
Here, let's find the release config.
There is no release config.
This is something that we're actually going to have to add ourselves.
We do have the debug right here, but for the release,
we're going to copy this and we're going to paste it right here.
We have all of the variables that we need already set up.
Let's just save this.
Let me make sure I have no errors.
It seems like I do.
I need one more braces here.
Let's save this again. Great.
Now we need a new item here inside the release of the build types.
We have this right now and it says, Caution in production
you need to generate your own Keystore file.
We are going to do this and we're going to delete this line
and we're going to paste this new line here.
Great.
After this, we are ready to generate the new AAB file and release it.
Honestly, I have already used this command and this is outdated,
so let's just not follow this because it's going to disappoint us and it
is going to generate only APK files which are outdated.
We cannot use that.
If you are interested to see how that went
for me, I can show you that there is no bundle folder created here.
So why don't you just follow me instead?
I have already found out what we can do for this.
So open up a new comment prompt and just go to your desktop and then donation app.
And then we can go to the Android folder here.
And then we can do gradlew clean to make sure that everything's starting
fresh and we have no caches messing with us.
And once you're done with that, we are going to use a command that is
going to be very different from what's given on the React Native documentation.
What I do want to say here,
this is already done, is that every time you upload a build
to Google Play Store, it needs to have unique version code and version name.
Right now, we're uploading it
for the first time, so version code is one and version name is one.
If you forget to change it on the following times you're going to try
to update your application, then you're going to face errors.
So if you're trying it for the second time and for the third time and for the fourth
time, please make sure that these numbers reflect it.
Now, even if I write here 200 and version
name 200 is going to work because I have literally no items uploaded.
But the main point here is that version
code has to be a number and it has to be unique.
The version name is going to be string and it's going to have to be unique as well.
I do recommend that you match the version
code with the version name, but leave the version name as a string.
Great. Now our application is clean.
We have cleaned up all the caches.
You can probably also see that there is no
build folder here that I showed you previously.
This is all set.
I'm just going to save all of these items here that we set up together.
Then what we want to do is in the same folder, run, gradlew bundleRelease.
This should generate an AAB file.
Just wait for this to be completed and come
back to the video once you're done with this.
Okay, great. This has been finished.
If we go to the Build folder here and go to Outputs and we're going to see
the bundle folder right now, you're going to see apprelease.aab file.
We're going to grab that aab file and use it for our release.
Just go to your play.google.com console
and inside our newly set up application, let's go to the Internal testing.
Here we can create a new release.
We can just click on here.
Here I have to choose the signing key first.
This is actually the first time I'm seeing this.
I'm just going to click on Use Google-generated key,
and I think it's generating something for me right now.
Great.
I'm going to try to upload this AAB file and see if it works.
Just do that or just click on Upload.
I guess it was not working for me and wait for that to be completed.
Great.
This has been uploaded and you're going to see that my version is number three
right now and this is because I have tried this command several times
and I had to upload the version code each time I tried to upload a new bundle.
On the third try, everything worked out for me.
Sometimes this happens, so this is totally fine with me.
Now you can just click on next here and
you might have some warnings which are not important.
Errors are always something to pay attention to.
This is not going to stop you from making
this application available to your friends.
Now, there might be some items here
that are worth looking at, but we're going to ignore this for now and click on Save.
This release is now available to the internal testers.
If I wanted to share this with my friends and they wanted to see the application,
then we can always just go to the testers right here.
We can go here and we can copy this link
and we can send it to your friends for them to join.
Just make sure that their email address that they use for Google Play Store is
included right here in your list and it's enabled.
Otherwise, they're not going to be able to see the application.
This is it on releasing your application.
You can always release it later to production.
There is some extra steps that you might need to do here and Google will check out
your account and they will make sure that everything has been filled out
correctly, whether it's privacy policy or user information.
You might get some feedback from them.
This is not an easy process to release an application to production.
It has to adhere to Google Play Store's terms and conditions.
Today, we're just going to be releasing it to the internal testing.
But once you fill out all of the information, you can always promote
this release to production or closed testing.
This is it, my friends.
You have completed the
final lesson that taught you how to upload the applications to Google Play Store.
Hope you enjoyed this course.
Thank you so much for being on this exhilarating journey with me.
Reach out if you have any questions or problems and have an amazing day.