« Ionic + Fastlane

First published: August 2017

Create local metadata file structure

After you installed and initialized fastlane you created your apps in the stores which we can now use to create a local file structure representing the necessary metadata.

iOS: fastlane deliver init

fastlane deliver is the tool that “uploads screenshots, metadata and binaries to iTunes Connect.”. But it can also be used to download all the exisiting metadata of an app or create an empty file structure to be filled with new metadata.

Run fastlane deliver init to download all the (of course non-existing) app metadata for your iOS app. By doing this Fastlane creates the local file structure for you to fill with actual data:

fastlane
├── Appfile
├── Deliverfile
├── Fastfile
├── metadata
│   ├── copyright.txt
│   ├── en-US
│   │   ├── description.txt
│   │   ├── keywords.txt
│   │   ├── marketing_url.txt
│   │   ├── name.txt
│   │   ├── privacy_url.txt
│   │   ├── promotional_text.txt
│   │   ├── release_notes.txt
│   │   ├── subtitle.txt
│   │   └── support_url.txt
│   ├── primary_category.txt
│   ├── primary_first_sub_category.txt
│   ├── primary_second_sub_category.txt
│   ├── review_information
│   │   ├── demo_password.txt
│   │   ├── demo_user.txt
│   │   ├── email_address.txt
│   │   ├── first_name.txt
│   │   ├── last_name.txt
│   │   ├── notes.txt
│   │   └── phone_number.txt
│   ├── secondary_category.txt
│   ├── secondary_first_sub_category.txt
│   ├── secondary_second_sub_category.txt
│   └── trade_representative_contact_information
│       ├── address_line1.txt
│       ├── city_name.txt
│       ├── country.txt
│       ├── is_displayed_on_app_store.txt
│       ├── postal_code.txt
│       └── trade_name.txt
└── screenshots
    └── README.txt

You can delete the Deliverfile created here as it only contains duplicated information from our Appfile.

If you just created your app in the previous step, of course most of these files are empty for now. Only en-US/name.txt and the files in trade_representative_contact_information/ contain some already known information.

Android: fastlane supply init

This time an Android equivalent tool exists, it is called fastlane supply.

By running fastlane supply init you can do the same for Android. Again it will create some local folders and files. If you just created a new app, en-US/title.txt is the only one which already contains data.

metadata/android
└── en-US
    ├── full_description.txt
    ├── images
    │   ├── phoneScreenshots
    │   ├── sevenInchScreenshots
    │   ├── tenInchScreenshots
    │   ├── tvScreenshots
    │   └── wearScreenshots
    ├── short_description.txt
    ├── title.txt
    └── video.txt

Done

You now have a local file structure for metadata and screenshots of both apps in your fastlane folder. (The combined file and folder structure in metadata clearly shows that Fastlane was started as a iOS tool.)

Now you can add metadata to this local structure and upload it to the stores.

« Ionic + Fastlane

First published: August 2017