edX Android
This is the source code for the edX mobile Android app. It is changing rapidly and its structure should not be relied upon. See http://code.edx.org for other parts of the edX code base.
It requires the "Dogwood" release of open edX or newer. See https://openedx.atlassian.net/wiki/display/COMM/Open+edX+Releases for more information.
License
This software is licensed under version 2 of the Apache License unless
otherwise noted. Please see LICENSE.txt
for details.
Building
This project is meant to be built using Android Studio. It can also be built from the gradle
command line.
-
Check out the source code:
git clone https://github.com/edx/edx-app-android
-
Open Android Studio and choose Open an Existing Android Studio Project
-
Choose
edx-app-android
. -
Click the Run button.
Configuration
The edX mobile Android app is designed to connect to an Open edX instance. You must configure the app with the correct server address and supply appropriate OAuth credentials. We use a configuration file mechanism similar to that of the Open edX platform. This mechanism is also used to make other values available to the app at runtime and store secret keys for third party services.
There is a default configuration that points to an edX devstack instance
running on localhost. See the default_config
directory. For the default
configuration to work, you must add OAuth credentials specific to your
installation.
Setup
To use a custom configuration in place of the default configuration, you will need to complete these tasks:
-
Create your own configuration directory somewhere else on the file system. For example, create
my_config
as a sibling of theedx-app-android
repository. -
Create an
edx.properties
file inside theOpenEdXMobile
directory ofedx-app-android
. In thisedx.properties
file, set theedx.dir
property to the path to your configuration directory relative to theOpenEdXMobile
directory. For example, if I stored my configuration side by side with theedx-app-android
repository atmy_config
then I'd have the followingedx.properties
:edx.dir = '../../my_config'
-
In the configuration directory that you added in step 1, create another
edx.properties
file. This properties file contains a list of filenames. The files should be in YAML format and are for storing specific keys. These files are specified relative to the configuration directory. Keys in files earlier in the list will be overridden by keys from files later in the list. For example, if I had two files, one shared between ios and android calledshared.yaml
and one with Android specific keys calledandroid.yaml
, I would have the followingedx.properties
:edx.android { configFiles = ['shared.yaml', 'android.yaml'] }
The full set of known keys can be found in the
org/edx/mobile/util/Config.java
file or see additional documentation.
Build Variants
There are 3 Build Variants in this project:
- prodDebug: Uses prod flavor for debug builds.
- prodDebuggable: Uses prod flavor for debug builds with debugging enabled.
- prodRelease: Uses prod flavor for release builds that'll work on devices with Android 4.1.x (Jelly Bean) and above.
Building For Release
To build an APK for release, you may specify an application ID and signing key.
Application ID key is optional and if it is not present the package identifier will be used as an application ID.
Create or edit the gradle.properties
file inside the OpenEdXMobile
directory of edx-app-android
. For example:
APPLICATION_ID=com.example.yourapp
RELEASE_STORE_FILE=../../path/to/your.keystore
RELEASE_STORE_PASSWORD=your store password here
RELEASE_KEY_PASSWORD=your key password here
RELEASE_KEY_ALIAS=your key alias here
Now you can build a release build from Android Studio. Or, in the directory of edx-app-android
you can build a release build with this gradle command:
./gradlew assembleProdRelease
Note: For release branch naming convention take a look at this PR openedx#774 that creates the versionCode automatically based on branch name. The output APK will be named with the version.
Customization
Resources
To customize images, colors, and layouts, you can specify a custom resource directory. Create or edit the gradle.properties
file inside the OpenEdXMobile
directory of edx-app-android
. For example:
RES_DIR = ../../path/to/your/res
Any resources placed here will override resources of the same name in the OpenEdXMobile/res
directory.
To remove all edX branding, override the drawables for: edx_logo
, edx_logo_login
, ic_launcher
, ic_new_cert
, and profile_photo_placeholder
. These come in a number of resolutions, be sure to replace them all.
If you need to make more in depth UI changes, most of the user interface is specified in standard Android XML files, which you can also override by placing new versions in your RES_DIR
.
Assets
To customize assets such as the End User License Agreement (EULA) you can specify a custom assets directory. Create or edit the gradle.properties
file inside the OpenEdXMobile
directory of edx-app-android
. For example:
ASSETS = ../../path/to/your/assets
Any assets placed here will override resources of the same name in the OpenEdXMobile/assets
directory.
Third Party Services
The app relies on the presence of several third party services: Facebook, NewRelic, Google+, SegmentIO, and Crashlytics. You may need to remove services you choose not to use. You can comment out the lines of code that mention these services.
We're working on making it easier for Open edX installations to apply customizations and select third party services without modifying the repository itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: I see an error that mentions "Unsupported major.minor version 51.0". How do I fix this?
A: Our build system requires Java 7 or later. If you see this error, install Java 7 or later.
You will also need to specify the new JDK version in Android Studio. Refer to this Stack Overflow entry for help doing so:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30631286/how-to-specify-the-jdk-version-in-android-studio
Q: After I upgraded to Android Studio v2.3, I've been facing alot of issues while compiling/building the project. How do I fix this?
A: We recently upgraded our project to support Android Studio v2.3.x and below. After the upgrade changes done in PR #938, we too faced some issues. The fixes for the common issues can be seen in the Issues section of this GitHub project. The most common and helpful issue with the fixes is Issue #976.
Q: I see an error that mentions "Error:Execution failed for task ':OpenEdXMobile:processDevDebugGoogleServices'. File google-services.json is missing.". How do I fix this?
A: This file is required for our Firebase analytics implementation to work. If you are not planning to use Firebase just add an empty file named google-services.json
at the root of the project's folder i.e. under OpenEdXMobile
folder.