1

Awhile ago, I made an app in MIT's App Inventor 2. I listed the app on the Play Store and it has close to 10K installs with 84 reviews and an overall rating of 4.67. I now have learned a little more about Android Programming and use Android Studio.

What I would like to do... Currently, I am embarking to recreate the application with Android Studio. For many reasons. Better UI, more API's Etc...

The issues I might face For one, I know that I will not be able to get the code from AI2 seeing as though it does not produce Java code. This is not really an issue because I will most likely be starting from scratch anyway.

Here is the real issue.

The keystore file will not match and the package name will not match thus preventing me from updating the app via the listing in the Playstore. This means that I can either continue with the limited capability of AI2 and retain that Playstore listing or begin developing the new app in Android Studio thus forfeiting the other Playstore listing and creating a new one from scratch (right?)

Solutions? I am looking for a solution (if one exists) in which I will be able to retain the app listing reviews and ratings while rewriting the app in Android Studio.

abbanoob
  • 221
  • 1
  • 15
  • why would the keystore file not match? Did you not create the keystore the first time when you published it? Same with the package name? I'm not entirely sure how MIT's App Inventor works but you did choose the package name, correct? – ᴛʜᴇᴘᴀᴛᴇʟ Oct 03 '16 at 02:41
  • Keystores would not match because one was generated by AI2 and the other was created in Android Studio (by me). Same situation for the package name. AI2 generated the package name for my project. – abbanoob Oct 03 '16 at 02:49
  • ah ok. I wasn't aware how AI2 works. Maybe you can extract the keystore out of the current APK? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11331469/how-do-i-find-out-which-keystore-was-used-to-sign-an-app?answertab=active#tab-top And As goes for the package, you know what the package name is right now so as long as you create the Android Studio app with the same package name and apply the extracted keystore, it might work – ᴛʜᴇᴘᴀᴛᴇʟ Oct 03 '16 at 02:54
  • Must the package name be the same? – abbanoob Oct 03 '16 at 03:01
  • yes, it must be. For google play store, package name is a unique ID. If you find your app on play store on a browser, you will see towards the end that your package name is there. It is how google keeps track of the apps. So that must be the same. if you change the package name, you will basically have to start a new project on the developer console – ᴛʜᴇᴘᴀᴛᴇʟ Oct 03 '16 at 03:04
  • So then how would I sign the new APK (the one created in Android Studio) with the extracted Keystore, if I am even able to do that – abbanoob Oct 03 '16 at 03:05
  • Unless AI2 does something special I'm not aware of, keystore has nothing to do with package name. I use one keystore with multiple packages. All google checks for is that package name matches and keystore matches. They don't know how you did it. They just need the final APK with matching signature – ᴛʜᴇᴘᴀᴛᴇʟ Oct 03 '16 at 03:10

0 Answers0