Checkinera – android source code

Checkinera – android source code

If you are looking for general documentation for Checkinera head over here.

If you want to learn how to customize the IOS Checkinera app follow this link.

Source code for Checkinera app will allow you to personalize the app to certain extent and then deploy it to Google Play Store as your own. This process is not particularly intricate but will require you to follow the steps we will explain here.

Requirements

First and foremost, in order to be able to edit the source code, you will need Android Studio which you can download from here. Depending on which operating system you're using, the appropriate download link should appear. Android Studio is available for Windows, MacOS, Linux and Chrome OS. A detailed instruction on how to install Android Studio for all the supported operating systems can be found here but it is quite straightforward process so you shouldn't have any problems with it if you have ever installed any application to your computer.

Opening the project

First download Android source code from your Tickera account. Once you have downloaded the source code of Checkinera app, unzip the downloaded file. Next, start the Android Studio which should then welcome you with the screen similar to this:

On this screen, you should select Open an existing Android Studio Project and in the browser window that will appear then, browse to the TickeraApp folder that contains the source code and which you have previously unzipped. Once you have browsed to this folder, do not select any particular file within that folder but simply click the Open button and the project should load. When loaded, your Android Studio screen should look something like this:

Now, if during the opening of the project, Android studio notifies you that there are some missing libraries that you should download or update, you should absolutely do that as missing libraries might cause issues with building your app later.

Changing the app title

To change the app title, you should navigate within the project to the /app/src/main/res/values/ folder where you will notice a file named strings.xml

Double click to open this file. When opened, it should look like this:

On the line 2 of this file, you will notice that it currently says

<string name="app_name">Checkinera</string>

...which is actually where the title of the app is defined. So, to change the app title, you should make changes only to the part of this line where it currently says Checkinera. The rest of the code in this file should be left intact as altering anything else here will cause issues once you starting building it.

Changing the app icon

The icons for the app are stored within /app/src/main/res/values/ in the folders mipmap-hdpi, mipmap-mdpi, mipmap-xhdpi and mipmap-xxhdpi. When you first take a look at these folders, it will seem as they contain the same file within each of these folders. However, that is not the case. The difference in images stored in these folders is that they all have different resolution. the reason for this is to provide a different icon for different screen resolutions of the devices which will run your app. Granted, nowadays, most modern Android devices will use an icon either stored in mipmap-xhdpi or mipmap-xxhdpi but to avoid issues on minority of devices with smaller resolution, you should set the icon for each of the cases. Namely, app icons should be set in their respective folders as following:

• mipmap-hdpi folder should contain an icon with the resolution 72 x 72 pixels
• mipmap-mdpi folder should contain an icon with the resolution 48 x 48 pixels
• mipmap-xhdpi folder should contain an icon with the resolution 96 x 96 pixels
• mipmap-xxhdpi folder should contain an icon with the resolution 144 x 144 pixels

All the images that you will be using as your app icons should be in PNG file format 24-bit color and they all should have the same filename ic_launcher.png

Placing the icons in their appropriate folders does not need to be done through the Android Studio but you can simply place them in their respective folders using your preferred file manager.

Changing the app URL

Before explaining how to do this, let's first quickly explain the reason why you would want to do this.

So, for this to have any effect on your app, you would need to install Checkinera plugin that you can download from your Tickera account. This plugin will allow you to place [tc_checkin] shortcode to any of your pages or posts in which case this page will automatically become a web interface for checking the tickets in and will act basically the same as any other Check-in app. Now, when you change the URL within the app and point it to this exact page, the app will basically use this page for checking the tickets in. This means that communication between your Check-in app will be exclusively tied to that exact URL.

To change the URL to which the Checkinera app will point, you should navigate to /app/src/main/java/com.tickera.tickeraapp/ and open the file Globals

Within this file, you will find a line that currently says this:

public static String url = "https://checkinera.com";

...and within this line, you can change the URL that states https://checkinera.com to the URL of the page where you have used [tc_checkin] shortcode on your website.

Signing and compiling an app

Once you've made the changes to the app according to your needs, you can now proceed to signing and compiling of the app.

To do this, click Build in the menu of Android Studio and then click Generate Signed Bundle / APK... 

*NOTE: depending on the operating system that you're running Android Studio on, this menu might be placed and look differently but the options are named identically

On the popup that will appear afterwards, select APK as displayed on the screenshot below and then click Next: 

In the next step, you will need to sign the app. If you already have a key, you can select Choose existing... in which you should browse to it and select it. However, if you don't have a key, you should click Create new...

If you have clicked Create new... another popup will appear:

Within this popup you should fill in the fields like this:

• Key store path - browse to the folder where you want to store the key
• Password - enter desired password
• Confirm - confirm the password you have entered to the previous field
• Alias - enter the alias for your key
• Password - enter desired password
• Confirm - confirm the password you have entered to the previous field
• Validity - select validity of your key (you can leave this as is)
• First and Last Name - enter your first and last name
• Organizational Unit - enter the organizational unit of your organization (eg. app development)
• Organization - the name of your organization (eg. My Event Company)
• City or Locality - city or your organization (eg. Lewes)
• State or Province - state/province of your organization (eg. Delaware)
• Country Code (XX) - country code of your country (eg. US)

Once you have filled all the fields, hit the OK button which will bring you back to the previous popup but this time the key you have just created will be selected and all the fields should be entered similarly to the screenshot below:

In this window, just click Next. This will bring you to another step where you should select build variant and signature version. As displayed on the screenshot below, you should select here release for Build variant and V2 (Full APK Signature) for signature version:

Once you click Finish button, Android Studio will start building the app and when it is done, you will be able to access your app within the /app/release/ folder of the app source code. Your app will be named app-release.apk

You can now sideload this app to your Android device to test it out or deploy it to Google Play Store using your Google Play Console which you can find more about and access here.