title: Build .apk for react native app
body: <p>I am quite new to the react-native world. And so far i have not picked up on how to create an apk (i assume ipa would be similar) yet. I know there are some documentation entries and a lot of other questions that seem to answer that, but none of them works for me. </p>
  
  <p>So the basic use case i would be interested in is building an apk for the demo application. Following the getting started i would do</p>
  
  <pre><code>create-react-native-app MyProject
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Now i am able to start the packager and server and use expo. Perfect. But i want to build the apk now. All answers i found are either done via some kind of <code>cd android &amp;&amp; ./gradlew build</code>, but there is no android folder in the application (apparently because expo takes care of it for non ejected apps). The other way would maybe to use <code>expo</code>, but i am running into errors all the way long. And as in the getting started guide <code>expo</code> is not directly mentioned, rather the <code>npm</code> commands it might not be the way to go.</p>
  
  <p>I know about <a href="https://facebook.github.io/react-native/releases/0.19/docs/signed-apk-android.html" rel="noreferrer">https://facebook.github.io/react-native/releases/0.19/docs/signed-apk-android.html</a> which requires the android folder. Also the <code>curl</code> version mentioned i.e. here <a href="https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/2943" rel="noreferrer">https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/2943</a> which does not to the trick as well as all the methods in <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32629379/how-to-build-react-native-android-app-for-production">How to build react native android app for production?</a>.</p>