Code Push for Android Hybrid Apps
This guide explains how to use Shorebird in an Android hybrid app scenario (that is, your app embeds Flutter UI in non-Flutter UI).
This guide assumes you have already have an Android app and a Flutter module. Our Android app will be named android_app
and our Flutter module will be named flutter_module
.
This guide also assumes that you have created a Shorebird account. If you have not, please see our code push guide for instructions.
The reference code for this guide is available at https://github.com/shorebirdtech/samples/tree/main/add_to_app.
First, run shorebird init
in your Flutter module:
shorebird init
Create a Shorebird release for your Flutter module:
shorebird release aar --release-version 1.2.3+1
The release-version
parameter needs to match the version of the Android app
that uses this module (i.e., versionName+versionCode
from the app’s
app/build.gradle
file).
In settings.gradle
:
dependencyResolutionManagement { repositoriesMode.set(RepositoriesMode.FAIL_ON_PROJECT_REPOS) repositories { google() mavenCentral() maven { // This is a relative path from this settings.gradle file to the // my_flutter_module/build/host/outputs/repo directory. url '../my_flutter_module/release' } maven { url 'https://storage.googleapis.com/download.flutter.io' url 'https://download.shorebird.dev/download.flutter.io' } }}
In app/build.gradle
, add the following:
buildTypes { release { // ... // The Dart compiler builds libapp.so directly (does not use clang),and already strips // symbols. However when llvm-strip is run on libapp.so, the symbols are re-sorted // causing the hash of the library to change (which can confuse Shorebird tools). // This line tells gradle to skip the unnecessary llvm-strip step for libapp.so // thus ensuring that the libapp.so that Shorebird sees is byte-identical to the one // which ends up in the APK/AAR/AAB. packaging.jniLibs.keepDebugSymbols.add("**/libapp.so") // ... }}
dependencies { // ... releaseImplementation 'com.example.my_flutter_module:flutter_release:1.0' // ...}
In Android Studio, update the active build variant to release and run your app. Your app should work as before with no differences.
To set the active build variant to release, click on the “Build Variants” tab in
the lower left corner of Android Studio. Then select “release” from the
“Active Build Variant” dropdown.
Attempting to build with a non-release build variant will not be able to resolve Flutter symbols in your app.
We won’t cover this step in detail here, but this is where you would submit your
app to the Play Store. For code push to work, it is important that you submit
with the same aar
generated by the release command above.
Make an edit to the code in your Flutter module. Then run:
shorebird patch aar --release-version 1.2.3+1
As with the release
command, the release version should be the version of the
Android app that uses this module.
Now relaunch the app, navigate to the Flutter screen, and verify that the patch is recognized and applied. In logcat, you should see output like the following:
[INFO:shorebird.cc(109)] Shorebird updater: no active patch.[INFO:shorebird.cc(113)] Starting Shorebird updateupdater::network: Sending patch check request: PatchCheckRequest { app_id: "baad0583-6810-44a7-9034-6aadb8127f29", channel: "stable", release_version: "1.0.0+8", patch_number: None, platform: "android", arch: "aarch64" }updater::updater: Patch 1 successfully installed.updater::updater: Update thread finished with status: Update installed