Now that Course Assist is completed I've been running a series of tests to make sure everything is working the way it is supposed to. Part of this testing stage is running the APKs (an Android version of the app) on an Android device before publishing them on the Google play store. To get these APKs I first had to prepare the apps and then build them. In this short article😂 , I'll walk you through how I went about building the Course Assist apps APKs and how they performed when I tested them on an Android device. Let's dive straight in.

Building the APKs 🔨

I first started by prepping the apps by making sure all the endpoints I used to connect to the API on my local server were changed to the ones used on the deployed server. I also made sure I cleared some things in the code that could cause errors during the building process.

To build the Course Assist apps I had to first install EAS build which is an expo package that allows you to build expo apps that are ready to be deployed to the Google play store and Apple app store. I then followed the rest of the EAS build instructions which eventually led to running the build which took quite some time to do. But once complete, the APK was ready for download on my expo dashboard so I quickly set up my Android device to install the APKs and I downloaded them. When I tested them they worked as they're supposed to with just a few issues that are UI related. It was honestly such an amazing feeling seeing something I've spent so much of my time and energy to build working the way it is supposed to😁.

With testing on an actual device now complete the only remaining step is to launch Course Assist. Thanks for reading and see you in the next one🙏