Kiwix Android Custom Apps

Kiwix Android custom apps are Android apps running Kiwix for Android against a pre-configured ZIM file.

Kiwix publishes more than a dozen of such apps. [Wikimed

Offline Medical Wikipedia](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kiwix.kiwixcustomwikimed) and Wikivoyage - Offline Travel Guide being the most famous ones.

This project contains data and scripts needed to create specific custom Kiwix Android apps. It does not create the app, that's done separately by running the relevant Gradle command to build one or more custom apps.

Disclaimer

This document is for publishers who aim to publish new custom apps. If you are a developer and want to have an in-depth understanding about the custom apps, please read CONTRIBUTING.md.

Custom app folder

In the repository, each custom configuration is isolated in a so called custom app folder. If you need to create a new one for a new custom app, you can do that easily using Github UI. Go to https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-android-custom/new/main, put the name of your app (no space, lowercase only) and add a slash at the end.

Description json file

The configuration of the custom app is handled using the info.json file which is in the custom app folder. Take example on an already existing one if you need to create a new custom app. The most important fields are:

app_name, the title of the app
zim_url, the ZIM online URL (to download to create the app)
enforced_lang, the language code of the content (and the app UI)
disable_sidebar, a boolean value, when set to true, it hides the sidebar
disable_tabs, a boolean value, when set to true, it deactivates the multi-tabs feature
disable_read_aloud, a boolean value, when set to true, it disable the text-to-speech feature
disable_title, a boolean value, when set to true, it disable the app title and set the app icon to hamburger
disable_external_links, a boolean value when set to true, it disables the external link popup and hides the external links preference from the settings.
about_the_app, a URL, when it is set, it adds an About app_name app item to the sidebar app_name will be replaced with the actual app name. Clicking it opens the URL in an external web browser
support_url, a URL, when it is set, it adds an Support app_name item to the sidebar app_name will be replaced with the actual app name. Clicking it opens the URL in an external web browser
new, A boolean value, when set to true, it triggers the creation and storage of a dummy release Bundle during the current workflow run.
upload_bundle A boolean value. When set to true, it uploads the bundle to the Play Store, Otherwise, it uploads the APK.

You can also create this new file using Github IO. Go to https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-android-custom/new/main and type info.json.

Remark: If you make a simple update, just replace the zim_url with the latest available zim from download.kiwix.org/zim. Then comment your commit (e.g. "updated to YYYY-MM zim") and commit directly to main branch. You won't have to change anything more than this (just tagging the release, see below).

Icon master

The Icon master is file icon.png you find (or have to create) in the custom app folder. It is a square PNG file which is used as master to create the Icon set (see section below). This master has to match many constraints and you might even have to create an icon_foreground.png and icon_baground.png to achieve to do certain things. Look at the Android documentation about adaptive icons to know more.

Icon set

The Android custom app needs an Icon set to build properly. This Icon set is needed to properly show the app icon on user devices and is a list of bitmap pictures which are derivatives of an icon master.

To create this Icon set, follow these steps:

Create a new empty project with Android Studio (add no activity > next > finish)
In the project view (top left) there should be a dropdown that says Android select that and choose Project, this will make the project view display accurately to the file system
Delete MyApplication/app/src/main/res
Right click MyApplication/app in android studio, click New>Image Asset to open Asset Studio (if this option is greyed out you will have to wait for indexing to finish, this shouldn't take longer than 2 minutes)
For foreground layer Source Asset > Asset Type choose Image
For path click the folder icon and browse to the output of gen-std-icon.py
For background layer Source Asset > Asset Type choose Color
Click on the color box
This should present the color chooser, the box in the top right with the label # should be auto selected. Type FFFFFF to supply white as the color, this is typically the color used
[Optional] go back to foreground layer and size the icon as appropriate with the slider
Next > Finish will generate a res folder with all the icons needed in the location where you previously deleted the res folder.
Cut and paste the res folder to kiwix-android-custom/whatever-directory-this-icon-set-is-for

These instructions are for a first time setup, you can reuse this project in the future for icon generation so many steps can be omitted.

Version name

The custom app will have a version name displayed on the Google Play store. This version name has to be a date in the format YYYY-MM (for example 2018-10. This version name should be the date of the content (neither the date of the Software nor the release date).

The app version name is determined in that order:

The date can be hardcoded in the json file at the key version_name. Considering that this needs maintenance and that the publisher can easily create a discrepency with the ZIM content date, this should probably be avoided in most of the time.
If nothing is specified in the json, then it tries to extract it from the ZIM file name. If the file - specified in zim_url - is wikipedia_en_all_maxi_2018-10.zim then it will be 2018-10.
Otherwise the current date will be put (should be avoided).

Releasing

Simply tag the repo in git with the name of a custom app, for example:

git tag -f tunisie
git push -f origin tunisie

then Go to the release tab and click on "Draft a new release". As "tag version" use the custom app folder name (e.g. wikimedar). Publish by adding for example "WikiMed FA 2021-06" as title, no description is needed.

This triggers a Github action that will build an app Bundle using kiwix-android main branch and the illustrations/icons set/json defined in this repository.

The very first release has to be done manually. Put the new attribute so the release management action provides you the dummy first bundle to upload.

All other further releases (without the new attribute in the json.info) are then uploaded automatically to the Google Play app store as draft. Therefore, once released, go then to the Google Play Store Admin dashboard for the corresponding app and go to menu "Publication management" > "App version": under "Internal Testing", you can click on "Modify version". After a couple of hours the new version of the app should be listed in the public Play Store.

Releasing in your organisation

If you want to publish the application in your organization(Play store account), kiwix requires a service account JSON file to automatically publish your app on play store.

How to create Service Account

You need a GCP(Google Cloud Platform) account for this.
Create a project for your application in the GCP.
Enable the AndroidPublisher API for that GCP project.
Create a service account and key
1. Make sure you're in the GCP project you used above (check the project query param in the URL)
2. Select New service account
3. Give it a name and the Project Owner role.
4. After creating the service account, find it in the list of all service accounts and use the 3 dots menu to Manage keys
5. From there, create a new key using the Add key menu (leave JSON selected).
Give your service account permissions to publish apps on your behalf.
1. Click Invite new user
2. Copy/paste the service account email (you can find it in the JSON credentials)
3. Don't touch the roles
4. Give the Release apps to testing tracks permission
We required that JSON file which was downloaded from the GCP for publishing your application.

Initial Play Store upload

The first app bundle needs to be uploaded via the Google Play Console because registering the app with the Play Store cannot be done using the Play Developer API. After the initial upload, the application will be automatically uploaded by our CD process.

License

GPLv3 or later, see LICENSE for more details.

kiwix / kiwix-android-custom

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