使用gradle自动更改App Environment（开发/生产...）

Question

I am developing android application.In the app, I need to have multiple servers such as development, staging and production. For each environment, I had to specify others sensitive keys as well. I am changing flag for each environment manually it for now. I want to use gradle to automate this. According to gradle documentation , there is a terms called build type such as release and debug by default. There is also product flavours . I am not sure which one to use and how to. Any advice would be appreciate.

This is how i change App env in Application.java

public static final int APP_ENV = 2;//2 => dev, 1 => staging, 0 => production

This is how I differentiate url and other keys

switch (envVar){
            case DEV :
                url ="http://a.com";
                google_analytic_id="aaaa..";
                ....
                break;
            case STAG :
                url = "http://b.com";
                google_analytic_id="bbbb..";
                .....
                break;
            case PRO :
                google_analytic_id="cccc..";
                .....
                break;
            default:
                url ="http://a.com";
                break;
        }

Answer 1

You should use flavours for this. A partial build.gradle file might look like:

productFlavors {
  production {
    buildConfigField 'String', 'URL', '"http://a.com"'
  }
  development {
      buildConfigField 'String', 'URL', '"http://b.com"'
  }
}

which will populate BuildConfig.java with the information you provided. Then in your Java code you can do things like:

System.out.println("My URL is " + BuildConfig.URL);

And you can create your particular build with:

gradle assembleProductionDebug

or

gradle assembleDevelopmentDebug

(where you can switch Debug for Release as required).

Details of how to use product flavours is available at http://developer.android.com/tools/building/configuring-gradle.html