Building and deploying mobile applications

You can set up your development environment so that you can build your mobile applications and, by using the IBM® MobileFirst Platform Foundation (formerly Worklight®) plug-in forIBM UrbanCode™ Deploy, deploy the build results to the MobileFirst Platform Foundation Server.

Before you begin

Ensure that the following software is installed and running:

Extra software might be required, such as:
  • Source control management (SCM) system.
  • Build engine.
  • Application server.
  • Database.

About this task

Before you can build and deploy mobile applications to the MobileFirst Platform Foundation Server, you must complete the following configuration steps:
  1. Configure the build system.
  2. Configure IBM UrbanCode Deploy, including the following steps:
    • Create components.
    • Create component processes or application processes that include steps from the MobileFirst Platform Foundation plug-in to deploy the application. See Deploying mobile applications.
  3. Configure Worklight Server Console, including the following steps:
    • Create and configure a database.
    • Configure the MobileFirst Platform Foundation project web archive (WAR) file.

Procedure

  • After you set up the build, IBM UrbanCode Deploy and MobileFirst Platform Foundation Server console, you can build and deploy mobile applications by using the following high-level steps:
    1. Check in (commit) changes from MobileFirst Platform Foundation Studio into a source control management (SCM) system.
    2. Build the application and add a version to IBM UrbanCode Deploy.
      Tip: Assign a version to the mobile application that is deployed to the Application Center. This version must match the version that is assigned in IBM UrbanCode Deploy.
      For example, if the mobile application has a commercial version of 1.0 on the Application Center and the internal version from the latest build is 16, assign version 1.0.16 to the application in IBM UrbanCode Deploy. Keeping the version numbers synchronized helps you to recover if you encounter a problem. For example, if the latest version of the mobile application was not deployed successfully to the Application Center.
    3. Request deployment in IBM UrbanCode Deploy.
    4. View the mobile artifacts in the MobileFirst Platform Foundation Console, install, and test the application from the Application Center.

    Results

    The mobile application artifacts are deployed to the MobileFirst Platform Foundation Server and can be installed on the target device.

    What to do next

    Optionally, create extra component and application processes in IBM UrbanCode Deploy to roll back deployments (for example, to recover from an error condition or an incomplete deployment.)
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