Making an Android App Bundle .aab file from a Cordova project

At this time, I have been unsuccessful generating a signed aab file for upload to Google Play from Android Studio. Still, others may have more success following these steps, since their environment will be different from mine. These steps are reasonably complete that you might try it out.

Google Play wants us to submit an .aab file instead of an .apk file so that Google Play could download just the files the user needs at the first download. (At this time, Google Play still accepts .apk files, however.) This could result in significant app install memory savings. You can learn more about this here: https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle

Until we have an automated command-line process from Apache Cordova, we can make this file with Android Studio. Here are the steps to do so. While making this article, I came across many errors in trying to make this process work. I ironed out the errors and pieced this workflow together so it is streamlined, otherwise it would have been twice as long to read about all my dead ends. (Along the way, I created an SDK. I’m not sure it is needed for these steps to work.)

When done, I deleted my project and started from scratch to make sure these steps worked.

Using Android Studio with Cordova projects

This article assumes you already have a Cordova project ready to use. So you will use CLI to build the project first as you normally would, including adding an Android platform to the project and running cordova build android. You’ll still need to use the steps outlined in my article to build Cordova apps, including steps for installing plugins, icons, and screens: https://iphonedevlog.wordpress.com/2014/06/20/using-cordova-3-5-cli-on-mac-os-x-mavericks-to-build-android-apps/

You’ll need the dependencies set up if you’ve never made a Cordova project before. See: https://iphonedevlog.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/setting-up-your-developmemt-environment-for-cordovaphonegap-android-projects/

Resources:
https://cordova.apache.org/docs/en/latest/guide/platforms/android/
https://developer.android.com/studio/intro/index.html
https://developer.android.com/studio/install.html 

Using Android Studio Beta with Cordova PhoneGap

Article updated here 11/2016: https://iphonedevlog.wordpress.com/2016/11/21/using-android-studio-with-cordova-projects/

I installed Android Studio Beta to see how it currently stacks up against Eclipse. It’s apparent that Android Development Tools for Eclipse is going the way of the dodo and will no longer be updated as vigorously. It’s my impression that Android Studio Beta (AS) is Google’s new SDK to replace Eclipse. We’ll need to learn it sooner or later, so why not now? Here are my notes as I set up the environment and discover the path to creating an apk. These steps track the install and setup of Android Studio down to outputting a signed apk for Google Play upload.