Setup Environment for Android platform

To develop android applications using ionic framework we need to install platform specific tools. Because here we are going to develop an android app so we need to install only android platform tools. If you want to develop applications in iOS or windows phone so install those platform tools. To install platform tools we do not need to install complete android studio, here we going to install only android sdk stand alone tool.

For windows users developing for android have following installed set up.

1. Java JDK
2. Apache Ant
3. Android SDK (not android studio, only android sdk tool stand alone)

Java JDK

Install the most recent Java JDK (not just the JRE). Next, create an environment variable for JAVA_HOME pointing to the root folder where the Java JDK was installed. So, if you installed the JDK into C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_144, set JAVA_HOME to be this path. After that, add the JDK's bin directory to the PATH variable as well.

Apache Ant

To install Ant, download a zip from Here, extract it, move the first folder in the zip to a safe place, and update your PATH to include the bin folder in that folder. For example, if you moved the Ant folder to c:/, you'd want to add this to your PATH: C:\apache-ant-1.9.2\bin.

How to istall android sdk tools stand alone: (Platform tools)

Installing the Android SDK is also necessary. The Android SDK provides you the API libraries and developer tools necessary to build, test, and debug apps for Android.

1- Download sdk tool form : https://developer.android.com/
2- Download zip file from :https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/sdkmanager.html

3- Unzip file and  go to the directory where you download the above zip file in my case (E:\ionic\sdk-tools-windows-3859397\tools\bin)

4- Open command prompt and type bellow commands

    >> sdkmanager --licenses

    >> sdkmanager "platform-tools" "platforms;android-26" “build-tools;26.0.1”

5- The above command will install the ("platform-tools" "platforms;android-26" and "build-tools;26.0.1")

7- Now go to E:\ionic\sdk-tools-windows-3859397\platform-tools and open command prompt and type following command to check the installed version of adb (Andriod Debug Bridge) and fastboot.

    >>adb version

    >>fastboot

8- Now update your  path (environment variable.) to include the  "tools/ and platform-tools/", So, using ANDROID_HOME, you would add both %ANDROID_HOME%\tools and %ANDROID_HOME%\platform-tools.

After ensuring above activities, now you can add android platform, we will add android platform in our ionic app after creating our first app. In my next article we will Create Hello World Ionic App.