Overview

Objectives

  • create a simple "Hello world" app using FeedHenry App Studio
  • build the application and install it on your Android device

Prerequisites

  • FeedHenry App Studio account. You can sign up for free if you don't have one yet.

Optional

  • an Android device with Dropbox app installed

Tutorial

Step 1 : Login to the App Studio

Login to the App studio with your account

Step 2: Create a "Hello World" app

  • After logging in to the studio, select the "Apps" tab.
  • On the "My Apps" page, select "Create An App". You will be presented with a wizard to guide you through the process. Select "Create an App from scratch":

  • Then you will be asked to give the name and description of the app. Let's name the app as "Hello World" and put "my first app" as the description.
  • Next, you will be asked to choose a library or framework for your app. For now, we don't select any and just go to next step. You can go to App Libraries page for more details.
  • Your app is being created. Once it's finished, you will have the option to build the app or edit it. Let's choose "Edit my app" and finish.

Step 3: Edit the app

You will be brought to the editor view as shown below:

Click on the folders on the left hand side to expand them. You can see there are some files created for the app already. For the moment, you don't have to understand why the files are orginized like this, but if you want to find more, check out the App Labs section.

Find the index.html file in "client/default" directory and click on it. This will open the file in the embeded file editor. You may find that the file already has some contents.

Replace the file content with the following code:

<h1><a name="Hellow World">Hellow World</a></h1>

Save the file (using "Ctrl+S" or click on the "Save" button), you will notice the preview window on the right hand side has updated and it will be look like this:

Step 4: Build the app for Android

Now we can build the app for Android. Normally this means you have to go to the Android developer website and download the Android SDK and run some commands manually to build it. However, this is not the case for FeedHenry. You don't need to do all of these at all.

  • On the same page in the studio as in last step, select "Manage" option on the left.
  • In the sub list, you will see a "Build" option. Select it
  • You will notice the editor area has been replaced with some mobile platform icons. Click on the "Android" platform.
  • You can then build for either "Debug" or "Release" version of the app. For now, we will build for "Debug". Click on the green "Build Now" button. You will find the button for building "Release" app is red. This means you can't build for "Release" yet because you havn't upload the necessary building resources. If you want to know why you need to upload building resources and how to do it, you can find more details in App Building Resources section.
  • Next, you can select which Android SDK version the app should be built for. Let's choose "2.2" for this app. Then "Next"
  • Now your app is building. You will see some logging information about the build process. Once the build is finished, the browser should start to download the built binary file (.apk) file immediately. (Depends on your browser, you may be prompted for the location to save the file).

Step 5: Install the app on the device

There are several ways to install the app on your Android devices, you can see Deploying Apps to Android section for more details.

In this tutorial, we will use Dropbox.

  • Copy the downloaded .apk file to your Dropbox.
  • On your device, open the Dropbox app, you should see the file. (If you can't find it, refresh the Dropbox app.)
  • Click on it, Dropbox will download it for you. Once it's finished, you will be asked to confirm the app installation. Click on "Install".
  • The installation will be finished within a few seconds. Once finished, click on "Open".
  • You should see the app running on your device and see the "Hello World" text as you see in the app preview.

What's next

© FeedHenry 2012