IBM Worklight: Upload application to Worklight Server / App Store

2
votes

With Direct Update, the mobile application can be automatically update with a new version of the web resources. In order to update the native resource, a new version of application must be uploaded to application store.

Consider the case that I have an update for my Worklight app with both native and web resources code update which has already been in application store.

Questions:

  1. Is the following a correct way to update the app?

    Step 1. Package the app in .ipa / .apk (with native + web code) and submit to application store
    Step 2. Deploy an updated .wlapp file (with web code) to Worklight Server.

  2. In application store, I can specify the application version when uploading the application. Will the application version be incremented automatically once I deploy the .wlapp to Worklight Server?

  3. If the user does not update his application in application store and open the application, since there is a new web resource update in Worklight Server, it means that there will be a direct update alert box to prompt the user to download the latest application and in this case only web resource will be downloaded. There are some problems when the native code and web code are correlated?

Thanks a lot.

1
ibm-mobilefirst

1 Answers

2
votes

  1. This would essentially be the correct order of steps, yes.

    However, since you say you're updating both the native and web resources, I would make sure that the existing app can work with just the web resources update (without updating the native), because once deploying the .wlapp to the Worklight Server, existing users will receive a Direct Update.

    If this scenario is not one you want to support, then in application-descriptor.xml you should also up the value of the version=" " attribute in the environment's element. When building the app after doing so, this will create a new .wlapp (for example: myProjectNameMyAppName-1.1.wlapp instead of ...-1.0.wlapp).
    This means that the existing 1.0 users will not receive any Direct Updates, unless you deploy an updated ...-1.0.wlapp to the Worklight Server.

  2. In relation to the above, no, the application version is not incremented automatically, it is something you need to control manually.

    Also, I don't think the version value is something you control in the application store interface...
    IFAIK the application version is changeable in Xcode prior to creating the .ipa for iOS and in AndroidManifest.xml prior to generating the .apk for Android (and in similar fashion for other environments).

    EDIT: Actually... I think that changing the version value in application-descriptor.xml will also up the application's version number. Need to look at the end result (in AndroidManifest.xml or the Xcode project, in Xcode).

  3. This would really depend on the behavior of your application and how resilient you've written it to be in the face of updates. I have slightly covered this in #1 above.

Other than talking about it theoretically I would suggest taking the jump actually upload an app to an application store, and test it privately, of course. This would be the most convenient to do using Google Play where publishing an app is near-instant.