# Setting up Fastlane with Ionic/Cordova apps October 14, 2017 · Josh Strange · Tags: Android, cordova, fastlane, gitlab, gitlab-ci, google-play, ionic, iOS, iTunesConnect, match, testflight Source: https://joshstrange.com/2017/10/14/setting-up-fastlane-with-ionic-cordova-apps/ ![]() Recently I was tasked with setting up a build server to build our iOS apps automatically on git push to a certain branch. While the iOS part of this took the majority of my time (Provisioning Profiles, Certs, XCode project files, etc) this will show you how to setup both iOS and Android. I’m writing this because I couldn’t find any guides that worked for Ionic 2/3 and XCode 9. I won’t promise this is the most efficient way (the double iOS building irks me but I haven’t found a away around it yet) or most secure (I’m storing some passwords and certs in the repo and plan to move them out later) but it does work. The steps are essentially the following: - Install [Fastlane](https://docs.fastlane.tools/) - Setup [Match](https://docs.fastlane.tools/actions/match/) (used to manage provisioning profiles and certificates) - Get credentials/keys for [Google Play](https://docs.fastlane.tools/actions/supply/#setup) - Add in hook to “Upgrade” our XCode project file - Add `platforms/platforms.json` to repo - Setup your Fastfile (think of it like a makefile/gulpfile/etc) Some assumptions I’m making: - You have XCode CLI tools installed `xcode-select --install` - You have [brew](https://brew.sh/) installed - You have done this the “hard way” before (You have your apps setup in iTunesConnect/Google Play and have uploaded to Testflight and/or Google Play Alpha in the past) - You are managing your push notification certs (APNS) yourself, if you want to automate that part look into [Pem](https://docs.fastlane.tools/actions/pem/) ## Install Fastlane You *can* install Fastlane via Bundler but I’m personally not super comfortable with Ruby and I’m not good at debugging issues with it. It’s better (IMHO) to use the brew cask version which comes with all the correct versions of everything. If you are reading this guide after attempting to setup Fastlane on your own and installed it via Bundler I suggest you uninstall that version, I ran into multiple issues with it. With that out of the way let’s install Fastlane ```sh brew cask install fastlane ``` ## Setup Match I would suggest you create a new iTunesConnect “Admin” user to let Match run under. It needs to have the “Admin” role to do everything it does and you probably don’t want your build server to have a team members credentials on it. You also need to create a new git repo to hold the Provisioning Profiles and Signing Certificates (PP/SC). I’m using a gitlab repo on our self-hosted instance but you can use any *private* git repo. Also I am only using Match to manage distribution PP/SC, you can use it for development PP/SC but I personally don’t (I just use XCode automatic signing or that). Let’s start with initializing Match: ```sh fastlane match init ``` If you have already created PP/SC in the [iOS Dev Center](https://developer.apple.com/account/ios/profile/) then we need to delete them. DO NOT WORRY, this will not delete your apps or mess up already uploaded iOS builds (released or otherwise). I know it sounds scary but we are going to start off by running: ```sh fastlane match nuke distribution ``` This will clear out your PP/SC you have for distribution, don’t worry, we are going to create new ones right now: ```sh fastlane match distribution ``` Okay, we are good to move on setting up our Android certs (you can skip if you only want iOS ## Get credentials/keys for Google Play Things we need for this step: - Keystore for signing your Android app (myKeystore.jks) - Config file containing for signing (release-signing.properties) - Play Credentials (play-credentials.json) ### Keystore This should be self-explanatory, just put this in the root of your app repo. ### Config File Also put this in the root of your app repo. It should look like this: ``` storeFile=myKeystore.jks storePassword=XXXyourPasswordHereXXX keyAlias=XXXyourkeyAliasHereXXX keyPassword=XXXkeyPasswordHereXXX ``` ### Play Credentials Follow the [instructions here](https://docs.fastlane.tools/actions/supply/#setup) and put the resulting JSON file in the root of your app repo. ## Add Cordova hook We need to modify our `platforms/ios/My App.xcodeproj/project.pbxproj` but we don’t want to have to do it by hand (or by opening XCode) because that would defeat the purpose of a build server and we also don’t want to commit this file to git. What this boils down to one of the Fastlane actions we want to use blows up with a fresh `ionic cordova prepare` because it thinks the XCode project files is too old. Opening the project in XCode automatically upgrades the file but we need to do it all from the command line. If [this pull request](https://github.com/apache/cordova-ios/pull/343) has been merged into cordova-ios then this step may no longer be necessary. The hook we are going to use can be found here: My hook also adds the push notification capability but that should be easy enough to remove if you don’t need it. You will need to edit the it to put your app name instead of “My App”. Once you have added that file to your hooks directory (or wherever you store your hooks) you will need to add the following line into your `config.xml` file: ``` ``` You do NOT want to put that inside your iOS platform block. It needs to be at the top level. For some reason Cordova hooks don’t fire inside the platform blocks unless the command you run explicitly mentions a platform. `ionic cordova platform add ios` will trigger a hook inside the platform block but `ionic cordova prepare` will not even if/when it adds the missing iOS platform. ## Add `platforms/platforms.json` to repo Even though I had iOS and Android as engines in the `config.xml` file Cordova would not pick them up when running `ionic cordova prepare`. I had to edit my `.gitignore` and add `platforms/platforms.json` to my repo: ``` platforms/* !platforms/platforms.json ``` then run ```sh git add platforms/platforms.json ``` ## Setup your Fastfile Copy and paste the following Fastfile into `./fastfile/Fastfile` Search for “*REPLACE ME*” for all the places where you need to sub in your own values. Now you should be able to run: ```sh fastlane ios beta # OR fastlane android alpha ``` To automatically build and upload to Testflight or Google Play Alpha ## Extra: Gitlab CI We use Gitlab CI and here is the .gitlab-ci.yaml file we use: --- **Authorship** · I write all content on this blog myself. I may use LLMs for review and feedback, but never to author the content.