Automating Publishing to the Play Store

The Developer Console for Google Play provides API support for you to be able to push to the store automatically. This ability allows you to trigger builds on your continuous integration server (i.e. Jenkins) and have them uploaded the Play store for alpha or beta testing, as well as pushing to production directly.

Initial Setup

1. Navigate to Settings -> API Access:

   

2. There should be a Service Accounts section where you need to click the Create Service Account button. You will be asked to click on the first step to take you to the Google Developers Console.

   

3. Click on the Create New Client ID button.

   

4. Click to create new Service Account. Make sure to also request the .p12 Key File instead of JSON:

   

5. You will be prompted to download the .p12 file. Save it somewhere.

6. Note the service account email associated with this new account. You should see it appear in the Google Developer Console:

   

Setting Up Gradle Plugin

If you want to be able to automate deploys through Gradle, you can install a plugin such as the Gradle Play Publisher.

1. Add the following to the top of your app/build.gradle file:

       buildscript {
   
       repositories {
           mavenCentral()
       }
   
       dependencies {
           // ...
           classpath 'com.github.triplet.gradle:play-publisher:1.0.2'
       }
    }
   
   apply plugin: 'play'

2. Configure the plugin with the Google Service Account and p12 file saved in steps #5 and #6.

      play {
         track = 'alpha'
         serviceAccountEmail = '[email protected]'
         pk12File = file('Google Play Android Developer-12345.p12')
      }

3. The plugin creates the following tasks for you:

| Command | Description | |:---------------------------:|--------------------------------------------------------------------- | |publishApkRelease | Uploads the APK and the summary of recent changes. | |publishListingRelease | Uploads the descriptions and images for the Play Store listing. | |publishRelease | Uploads everything. | |bootstrapReleasePlayResources| Fetch data from the Play Store & bootstrap the required files/folders|

You can now type the following gradle commands such as the following:

./gradlew publishApkRelease