Introducing Appflow CLI 1.0

We introduced the Ionic Cloud CLI in 2021, and it has come a long way since. After some iterating, we’re super excited to announce that we are relaunching the CLI functionality under a brand-new name – “Appflow CLI.”  The new 1.0 version of the Appflow CLI makes it simple to take advantage of Appflow’s mobile CI/CD features within your existing CI/CD platforms—like Azure DevOps, Jenkins, GitLab CI, CircleCI, and more. Let’s dive in 👇

Mobile CI/CD: Complicated but necessary

Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), one of the fastest-growing sectors of the developer market, has transformed the way developers build and ship software. CI/CD enables teams to continuously test and iterate their apps — instead of performing these steps all at once before shipping — then automate app delivery. This is where Appflow comes in. Appflow handles the entire mobile app delivery process, from building a native binary to publishing in the app stores and updating apps over time. Development teams can focus completely on the unique features of their app and outsource the app delivery process to Appflow.

Integrate Appflow to Existing CI/CD Platforms

With the brand new Appflow CLI, your organization can continue to utilize a CI/CD platform like Azure DevOps, GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Travis, or CircleCI for DevOps orchestration while receiving all of the benefits of Appflow’s features. If you are new to the Appflow CLI, here is how you can take advantage of its powerful features, including:

Native Builds: Create native app binaries in the cloud to get from code to app store, with no platform dependencies or complicated build steps. Seamlessly integrate functionality like webhooks, native app previews, npm caching, with full control over the artifacts download. Enhance whitelabel app development with environments and native configurations support. 

App Store Publishing: Automate the final mile and send iOS and Android binaries directly to TestFlight, iOS App Store, and the Google Play Store for testing or production with App Store Publishing. Set up your destinations on the fly or ahead of time to easily automate your deployments. 

Live Updates: Achieve true mobile continuous delivery by updating your app in real-time to fix bugs before they become problems, introduce new functionality, and improve user experience with Live Updates. Create and manage your live update channels with simple commands, and keep them in sync with native versioning support.

Ready to integrate Appflow CLI in your CI/CD Platform?

It’s easy to get started. To use the latest version of the Appflow CLI, simply install it as the first step in your CI/CD pipeline:

curl -fsSL https://ionic.io/get-appflow-cli | bash

To authenticate with Appflow CLI, create a Personal Access Token then set it to an environment variable in your CI/CD system:

export IONIC_TOKEN=mytoken

Now you can use any of the following Appflow features in your pipelines:

# Trigger Native Build
$ appflow build ios

# Deploy to App Store
$ appflow deploy ios

# Trigger Live Update
$ appflow build web
$ appflow deploy web

These are just the basics of what you can do with Appflow’s new integrations. For complete examples for each CI/CD platform, the Appflow CLI reference, and more, view the docs.

Not Ready for Appflow CLI 1.0 yet?

No worries!. If you are already using the legacy Ionic Cloud CLI and want to stay with it for now, you can. If you’d like to lock the version of Ionic Cloud CLI in place for your pipeline, use the following command to install the Ionic Cloud CLI instead, replacing X.X.X with your desired version number. 

export IONIC_CLOUD_VERSION=X.X.X; curl -fsSL https://ionic.io/get-ionic-cloud-cli | bash

Try Appflow 

If you’re ready to move faster and build better with Appflow, reach out to one of our app strategists today to discuss how it can revolutionize your app delivery pipeline. You can also get started with a free account today!