Building Cross-Platform Apps using Titanium, Alloy, and Appcelerator Cloud Services

Chapter 13

Going to Market: Deploying to the App Store and to Google Play

THE DISTRIBUTION PROCESS for deploying your application to the Google Play Store and Apple App Store is pretty well documented on the Appcelerator website. The process is outlined briefly in this chapter, and more detailed step-by-step instructions and FAQs can be found on the Appcelerator site at http://docs.appcelerator.com/titanium/3.0/#!/guide/Preparing_for_Distribution.

Process Overview

This chapter describes how to deploy your cross-platform mobile app to the App Store and Google Play. The overall process is similar for both stores and is outlined here.

Registering for a Developer Account

The iOS Developer Program costs $99 per year and a Google Play Developer account costs $25. This barrier to entry is supposed to raise the minimum quality level of app submissions.

Signing Your Application

Signing with a digital certificate proves your identity as the developer of your app. You will create a CSR and sign the application with a certificate to which only you have the private key.

Creating an App Record and Filling Out Metadata

Each store requires certain metadata and image assets. Now is a good time to start putting together some general information to smooth out the process:

• App name
• Description (up to 4,000 characters)
• Keywords
• Large app icon (1024×1024 for iOS and 512×512 for Android)
• Screenshots (at least one 3.5-inch and one 4-inch for iOS; any two screenshots for Android)

Publishing Your Binary ...