{"id":1896,"date":"2013-10-14T08:37:54","date_gmt":"2013-10-13T20:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/?p=1896"},"modified":"2013-10-14T08:52:29","modified_gmt":"2013-10-13T20:52:29","slug":"getting-published-in-the-play-store-google-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/1896\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Published in the Play Store (Google Apps)"},"content":{"rendered":"[Estimated Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes]<\/span><\/span>

Well, this went far more smoothly than I had anticipated. At the XE5 World Tour event in Auckland, Brian Hamilton, creator of the iWD app<\/a>, told us that getting his approved took about a week (if I recall correctly), and he had to submit a video showing how his app worked, so I was anticipating a couple of days at least to get my widget published. A couple of hours is all it took !<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The process of submitting an app is very straight-forward.<\/p>\n

You can choose whether to start by uploading the app or filling in the Store listing details first. I opted to upload the APK first.<\/p>\n

This requires that you sign the APK with a legitimate key, rather than the default, debug key provided with the Android SDK. If you try to submit an APK signed with this debug key the store rejects the APK immediately.<\/p>\n

The Java JDK includes a utility for generating your own key for signing apps: keytool<\/strong><\/p>\n

Following the guide on the Android SDK developer site<\/a> I had my own key after a few seconds.<\/p>\n

In Oxygene<\/strong>, signing an app with your own key is a simple matter of changing some project settings. In the Release<\/strong> build configuration, choose to sign with your own key rather than the default, debug key, and then identify the location of the keystore<\/strong> file containing the key you wish to use (as produced by keytool<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

Signing itself is performed by Oxygene<\/strong> as part of the build process, so simply build for Release<\/strong> to produce an APK which the Google Play Store<\/strong> is happy to accept.<\/p>\n

After that, preparing the store listing took a few more minutes, writing up a description for the app (in my case a widget) and providing 2 screenshots (mandatory minimum) and setting pricing etc.<\/p>\n

All in all, it took longer to design the icon for my app (widget) than it did to submit it to the store !<\/p>\n

Pleasantly Surprised<\/h3>\n

As I say, I had expected it to take at least a couple of days for my widget to get approved and published so wasn’t particularly surprised or disappointed not to receive any email notifying me that my widget was published as yet.<\/p>\n

However, it seems that you don’t actually receive any such notification. Out of optimistic curiosity, a couple of hours later I tried searching the Play Store for my widget and lo and behold, there it was<\/a> !<\/p>\n

This has actually caught me out a little as the landing page I have in mind for the link for my “Developers Website<\/a>” isn’t yet ready, so I had to quickly cobble something together to avoid potential users being confronted by an ungracious “404 – not found<\/strong>“.<\/p>\n

So, my first widget published in the store<\/a> !<\/p>\n

[appbox googleplay nz.co.deltics.batterywidget]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Estimated Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes]<\/span><\/span> Well, this went far more smoothly than I had anticipated. At the XE5 World Tour event in Auckland, Brian Hamilton, creator of the iWD app, told us that getting his approved took about a week (if I recall correctly), and he had to submit a video showing how his app worked, so I was anticipating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[212,205,4,1,180],"tags":[153,240,241],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1TKYv-uA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2296,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/2296\/","url_meta":{"origin":1896,"position":0},"title":"Sign Here Please… (Using This Specific Pen)","date":"01 Sep 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"My original Android version of TXT-2-PARK has been in the Google Play Store for a little over a week now. 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