Customizing Your BlackBerry Application (Magic xpa 2.x)

The BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry 10 can run Android 2.3.3 platform applications, so first you need to create an Android APK file and then repackage the Android applications to BAR file format. This is the compatible file format required for an application to run on the BlackBerry Tablet OS.

Follow these steps to compile and sign your custom application:

1. Create an Android APK file.

Follow the steps in the Android section above to customize the Android application and to create an APK file.

2. Get code-signing keys from RIM.

The code-signing keys are used for creating a signed application that can run on BlackBerry PlayBook devices.

• Apply to receive code-signing keys from RIM.
  
  You can do that at: https://www.blackberry.com/SignedKeys/.
  
  Once approved, you will receive an email with the code-signing keys. Follow the installation instructions in the email.

Additional details can be found at: https://bdsc.webapps.blackberry.com/android/documentation/Configure_app_signing_2007101_11.html.

3. Create a signed PlayBook and BlackBerry 10 file.

The repackaging is done using the BlackBerry SDK tools located in the %EngineDir%\RIAModules\Utils\blackberry.tools.SDK folder.

• Navigate to the PlayBook build scripts folder: %EngineDir%\RIAModules\PlayBook.

• Copy your Android APK file to this folder.

• Open the build.cmd file using a text editor and change the following settings in it:

o sdk.dir – The directory in which the Android SDK is installed.

o SourceAPK – The Android APK file name.

o developer_certificate – The location and file name of the developer certificate.

o keystore_password – The keystore password.

• Run the build.cmd file.

• The build process creates a BAR file and signs it. This BAR file can be used for both BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry 10.

That’s it; you can now take the signed BAR file and install your application on your mobile device as detailed above.

Note:

1. A specific version of a BlackBerry Tablet OS application can only be signed once. If you modify the application without incrementing its version and try to sign the application a second time you will receive an error. To re-sign the application you need to Increment the versionCode value in the AndroidManifest.xml file and rebuild your Android APK file.

2. If your network is behind a proxy you may need to specify the proxy host and proxy port while signing. In that case, you can perform the signing manually (instead of the 'batchbar-signer' command used in the build.cmd file) using the blackberry-signer utility. For example:

• blackberry-signer -proxyhost 10.9.3.16 -proxyport 8080 -verbose -cskpass cskpassmk -keystore DevCert.p12 -storepass cskpassmk my.bar RDK

• blackberry-signer -keystore DevCert.p12 -storepass cskpassmk my.bar author

For more information, you can refer to: https://bdsc.webapps.blackberry.com/android/documentation.