Universal metadata

By default on Fastlane we use upload_to_app_store & upload_to_play_store to publish metadata on the store. But each of them use different folder structure to achieve the same goal.

The goal of this Fastlane plugin is to unify metadata & screenshots structure for both iOS and Android, and finally produce metadata folder that will be used by upload_to_app_store & upload_to_play_store. This is ideal for React Native or Flutter project.

Features

• Generate every screenshot size derived from a single file
• Generate every metadata for both Android & iOS from a single json file

Setup

1. First install the plugin by using fastlane add_plugin universal_metadata

2. Run the command fastlane run universal_metdata init:true languages:"en-US,fr-FR", this will init the folder universal-metadata with this structure

   universal-metadata
   ├── screenshots
   │   └── default
   │   └── en-US
   │   └── fr-FR
   ├── description
   │   └── default
   │       ├── full_description.txt
   │       └── short_description.txt
   │   └── en-US
   │       └── ...
   │   └── fr-FR
   │       └── ...
   ├── release-notes
   │   ├── default.txt
   │   ├── en-US.txt
   │   └── fr-FR.txt
   └── metadata.json
   

Configuration

Metadata.json

Concerning metadata, most of things are configurable in the file metadata.json.

Sometime you will see that value are in the form { "default": "A value" } in this case it means it’s a localized value and you can add translation for specific languages:

{
    "default": "Hello world !",
    "fr-FR": "Bonjour le monde !"
}

If a value had a direct value, it means it cannot be translate.

Others metadata

We decide to put descriptions & release-notes under specific files cause theses metadata are often multilines and so not very convenient to define in a JSON file.

You can define you description following this structure:

description
├── default
│   ├── full_description.txt
│   └── short_description.txt  <-- Android only
├── en-US
│   ├── full_description.txt
│   └── short_description.txt
└── fr-FR <-- Remove language folder to use default instead
    ├── full_description.txt
    └── short_description.txt

For release-notes it’s pretty close:

release-notes
├── default.txt
├── en-US.txt
└── fr-FR.txt <-- Remove language file to use default instead

Screenshots

Screenshots folder has a similar structure:

screenshots
├── default
│   ├── 1-screenshot.png
│   └── 2-screenshot.png
├── en-US
└── fr-FR <-- Remove language folder to use default instead

During the action, your screenshots will be resized to match size required by iOS & Android and put it the good folder.

⚠️ Default folder is used only if the folder for language doesn’t exist (if language folder is empty, no screenshot will be uploaded).

You can configure screenshot behavior by adding tags in the name of the file :

Tag	Description
tablet	Use the screenshot for tablet (without this tag it’s used only for phone)
contain	By default screenshot are resized with cover resizeMode. When the tag contain is present, screenshot will be resized with contain resizeMode (note for iOS, using contain tag can result to white border to match the exact size required by the App Store)
apple	If this tag is present, use the screenshot only for iOS
android	If this tag is present, use the screenshot only for Android

So for example you can add a screenshot random-name-apple-contain.png that will be use only for iOS and use resizeMode contain.

ℹ️ The order of the screenshots on the store depends of alphabetical order of the screenshots names.

Result

By running fastlane run universal_metdata languages:"en-US,fr-FR" you will get the following result:

screenshots
│   └── fr
│       ├── screen-1.png
│       └── screen-2.png
metadata
├── android
│   └── fr
│       ├── images
│       │   ├── phoneScreenshots
│       │   │   ├── screen-1.png
│       │   │   └── screen-2.png
│       │   ├── sevenInchScreenshots
│       │   │   ├── screen-1.png
│       │   │   └── screen-2.png
│       │   └── tenInchScreenshots
│       │   │   ├── screen-1.png
│       │   │   └── screen-2.png
│       ├── full_description.txt
│       ├── short_description.txt
│       ├── title.txt
│       └── video.txt
├── fr
│   ├── name.txt
│   ├── subtitle.txt
│   ├── privacy_url.txt
│   ├── description.txt
│   ├── keywords.txt
│   ├── release_notes.txt
│   ├── support_url.txt
│   ├── marketing_url.txt
│   └── promotional_text.txt
├── copyright.txt
├── primary_category.txt
├── secondary_category.txt
├── primary_first_sub_category.txt
├── primary_second_sub_category.txt
├── secondary_first_sub_category.txt
├── secondary_second_sub_category.txt
├── first_name.txt
├── last_name.txt
├── phone_number.txt
├── email_address.txt
├── demo_user.txt
├── demo_password.txt
└── notes.txt

Now you are able to run upload_to_app_store & upload_to_play_store without pain.

ℹ️ Don’t forget that you can use universal_metadata action in your lane, before uploading to store for example 😉

Params

You can use different params with the action:

Param	ENV Variable	Description	Default
languages	LANGUAGES	List of languages to use (comma-separated)
ios_screenshots_dir	IOS_SCREENSHOTS_DIR	The target dir for ios screenshots	fastlane/screenshots
skip_screenshots_resize	SKIP_SCREENSHOTS_RESIZE	Don’t resize screenshot if true	false
skip_screenshots	SKIP_SCREENSHOTS	Don’t manage screenshot at all if true	false

Tips & Warning

⚠️ Your metadata folder will be erased each time you run the action, be sure to not having sensitive data on it. Also since it will be auto-generated, we recommend to add it to your .gitignore

ℹ️ Personally I like to have all the result under fastlane/metadata, that’s why i use the ios_screenshots_dir params with the value fastlane/metadata/screenshots.

Because it’s not the default place for it, I have to add this to my Deliverfile:

# Cause we use non-standard path for screenshots, we have to add this options
ignore_language_directory_validation(true)
screenshots_path("./fastlane/metadata/screenshots")

# Prevent same screenshot from being uploaded multiple times
overwrite_screenshots(true)