Programming Android, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4. Getting Your Application into Users’ Hands

This chapter covers everything it takes to get your application into users’ hands. Earlier in this book, we told you everything you needed to get started reading example code and creating simple programs. Here, we complete the picture, with all the other operations you need to perform to widely distribute your applications, sell them (if that is your aim), and subsequently get paid by Google, which operates the Android Market.

You may not be ready to put your application into the Android Market, but keeping this process in mind will shape the way you design and implement your application. Commerce has considerations that are distinct from most other aspects of software development, including identifying yourself to the Android Market and to your customers, obtaining permission to use certain APIs, protecting your identity, and preparing your app to be run on a variety of hardware as well as to be updated over time.

Application Signing

Application signing, or code signing, enables Android devices, the Android Market, and alternative means of distribution to know which applications originate with the owner of a signing certificate, and to be certain the code has not been modified since it was signed.

Public Key Encryption and Cryptographic Signing

Public key cryptography depends on this mathematical principle: it is easy to multiply large prime numbers together, but it is extremely difficult to factor the resultant product. The multiplication ...