What the best way (in terms of efforts) to test android application by ordinary users (that have no ability to install android sdk, connect usb cable and so on things)?
I see two variants:
Google Play + alpha/beta versions restricted only for several users, but according to this delay may be several hours, and it is too long for me.
Is it possible to reduce this time delay to several minutes? Is it possible to automate, so our CI upload apk file after each commit?
Publish apk file on our web server, so user can install it via download. But I tried this way by myself, and for some reason apk file was openned by program that can open zip files, and this program not suggest install it, I have to install additional file manager, find apk file in download folder and install it with help of file manager. Is it expected behaviour for android, when I open external apk file?
may be there is more variants?
Related
I need to extract the APK of my application when it is installed, I know there is an application called APK EXTRACTOR which performs this task, but in my case I want to extract the apk myself from delphi code.
So far I have only been able to find the APKs of pre-installed applications on the phone in the path "/system/app" and "system/priv-app" but internally I cannot find the apk of my app.
I recall a long time ago a file manager did a backup
of all the applications.
It puts all the APKs in a directory on the phone
It was on the GOOGLE market.
It might help to find out how he does it.
We want to test with an application developed in Android Studio, we currently generate the APK file and install it in the devices of the testers, but for security reasons we don't want the APK file to remain in their devices, therefore after installing the application we delete this file.
There are some services to distribute the APK, but what they do is to send an invitation by mail to download the file and which remains in the downloads folder.
The idea is that this file is downloaded somewhere that isn't so easy to access the user, something similar to the play store, which I think downloads somewhere unknown, install the application and then deletes the apk.
Any suggestion or comment is welcome.
I built my first android app a few months ago and had it installed on my phone. After a few weeks I lost the app from my Windows PC because of a new installation of Windows. Now I need the app and it still resides inside the phone but I can't seem to find the apk file anywhere! I have tried looking in the app and app-private folders and also in the data folder but no luck. Any help would be appreciated.
Regards,
Owais
If that application still installed in your device then you can get that APK definitely
Find a application on play store named apk extractor.
It will be ask you for paid but skip it and install it, then there will be list of applications after installing apk extractor.
Just select the application for which you want apk.
I am developing an Android application and it is not finished. I would like to test it on multiple devices, locations with various users that are not near me. How can I achieve this? Is there an APK I can send them? Is there a way that is as simple as plugging my phone in and then running the application from Eclipse? Or would I have to make an installer of some sort (I don't know)?
Obviously you can plug your phone(s) into the machine you are developing on and run it from eclipse. This will allow you to test and debug on the devices you have access to.
You can also export an apk from eclipse (see the android pages for instructions). You could put this up on a file sharing site and make it available to your friends. They could then install it, as long as they have authorised "unsigned" apks to be installed in their phone settings.
Assuming you have deployed the app at least once from within Eclipse to debug and test yourself, you will most likely have an APK under the bin directory in your Eclipse project. The file should be .apk. This APK will have been signed automatically by Eclipse with your debug key. This is obviously not the key you use for publishing but for testing among friends I think it's fine.
What I often do is just e-mail that APK file as an attachment to my friends to an e-mail account they have setup on their phone. Then all they need to do on their phone is make sure they have the system setting to allow installation of non-market apps (i.e. not from Google Play), which maybe named something slightly different like "allow 3rd party apps". Then they can simply click on the app attachment in their e-mail, download it and run it and they should automatically be prompted with instructions to install it.
I just used MyAppSharer. (I believe there are other similar apps out there - this is just the one I've used and is very simple/easy:
...you can share by market link or directly share APK (App's full
package)
I just used that, and sent my app via apk file to my coworkers. Can't get much simpler.
Just install the app on your phone via Eclipse, then run this AppSharer, and voila - share it w/ anyone!
You can can easily export your project as an APK in eclipse
File -> Export -> Export Android Project
I do understand that a .apk file is created in the bin folder of an android project, when the project is run.
I have a question about this: is it possible that there would be any difference in the functionality of an app installed via eclipse (as in connecting the phone to the computer and uploading and installing the app on the phone) versus installing the app by downloading a .apk placed on a secure server?
The reason I ask this question is that I usually put up the .apk file on a secure server and the testing team downloads and installs the app for testing purposes. The testing team has started to report app crashes when accessing this app. However, I don't seem to be seeing the any such problems (even while replicating the same scenarios) with the app when I install it on the phone via a cable connected to the computer.
You might be falling into a caching issue. Make sure you get the QA team a new filename of the apk on the server to ensure that they never get a cached apk when downloading it. Also maybe create a md5 sum of the apk locally and run md5 on the apk on the server after upload to ensure it is the same.
e.g. use
md5 yourapk.apk > yourapk.md5
on your machine and the server..
Most likely you QA team has found issues that are specific to the device or Android platform version they test with. Try with your apk with the same hardware in your dev environment.
I don't see how that would possible. The Eclipse ADT plugin just calls the executables in the specified Android SDK location on your hard drive and the .apk gets generated only once when you use Eclipse to install the application to your plugged phone.
Unless you're packaging the two versions in a different way, that shouldn't be possible. My guess is that your testing team has just found bugs specific to the runtime environment (the phone). Maybe a different version of Android, conflicting custom ROM, etc.
No, there is no difference , if the apk on the secure server is as latest as you have on your computer.
I would recommend you to clean your project before uploading the apk to the server.
Regarding the crashes, i guess there are some location based problems.
Also check if you are uploading the apk from your workspace. or some other older version which is located in different place that you are not using anymore.