README-Windows.md

Windows / Android Setup

This document aims to improve the onboarding process for those wanting to become involved in the project, particularly those with Windows OS and wanting to emulate for android. The steps outlined in this guide are the ones I took to get my development environment set up and running on my own laptop as well as desktop. You may or may not require additional steps to get your program working.

Getting started

The mobile app is being developed using Axway's Appcelerator Titanium. Follow the link to sign-up as well as their instructions on getting started. The Appcelerator studio is optional so I recommend just installing the CLI and using your IDE of choice to work on the project.

After you have installed the Android SDK via Android studio, you will also need to set up your virtual device if you wish to emulate for testing purposes.

With android studio open, click the 'AVD Manager' icon in the top right

This will bring up a window that shows any android virtual devices that you have installed. Create a new virtual device with the button at the bottom left and choose a phone that has Play Store capabilities for testing.

For example, I chose the Pixel 2

Choose API 27(Oreo) or lower as many devices do not have, or have not yet received, the newest API 28(Pie)

After this is completed I also recommend running the emulator just to make sure all is well and that it is running as expected on your machine.

NOTE: Your machine must have virtualization capabilities in order to emulate android devices. This may require you going into your computers BIOS and simply enabling it.

Replacing your GUID in tiapp.xml

Applications built with Titanium have unique GUIDs associated with them which seem to be machine specific. Trying to build and or run the project without your personal GUID will prompt you with an error

Application is not registered.

Therefore, you must replace the GUID within the tiapp.xml file with your own personal GUID. To do this, create a blank titanium project with the CLI

appc new --type app --name APP_NAME --id com.appcelerator.APP_NAME

Where APP_NAME is replaced with whatever you want to name your project. This is unimportant since this will just be a skeleton created to retrieve your GUID. Navigate to the project folder and open its tiapp.xml file

Find and copy YOUR_GUID which will be a series of letters and numbers.

<guid>YOUR_GUID</guid>

. . ./APP_NAME/tiapp.xml

Replace the GUID in the project with YOUR_GUID

. . ./cary-connects-mobile/tiapp.xml

Setting your Google Maps API Key

We will be using Google maps for our android application and this requires an API key. You will have to visit this link: Google Cloud Platform Console, and follow the directions in order to create your API key. This requires you to set up a billing account associated with your google account, but it is completely free and does not actually charge you anything.

We can provide you with a google maps API key if you do not want to do this. Just let us know at a meeting or on the Slack channel.

Once you have obtained your API key, you must set it within the tiapp.xml file.

<android xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
  <manifest>
    <application>
      <meta-data android:name="com.google.android.maps.v2.API_KEY" android:value="YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"/>
    </application>
  </manifest>
</android>

Build and run app

Given that everything has been installed and configured correctly, navigate to the project folder within your CLI and you can build and run the project using the command:

appc run --platform android

Which will launch your emulator, create the .apk, and install it on your android virtual device.

NOTE: If you are still running into trouble with setting up your development environment and getting everything working, let us know during a meeting and we can further help you.