Self Hosted Expo Updates Server

Intro

Self Hosted Expo Update Server is ... a ready to use, battery included, Expo-compatible server to manage updates that you can host yourself in the cloud and have full control and visibility on the update cycle, including rollbacks!

I love the ability to push over-the-air updates with expo, it is a fantastic feature, but with great power comes great responsibility. The console-only interface can be tricky, the risk of making mistakes is high (especially on ejected app with incompatible binaries), if you want to roll back you really need to know what you are doing. And a single mistake can have potentially devastating impact.

I have already made a simple helper library that I use in my expo projects to simplify the update setup on the mobile side, check out expo-custom-updater

This is my attempt to simplify my own life when dealing with updates on the server side, and hopefully it can be useful to you too!

Features:

• Manage multiple Expo Apps
• Manage multiple Versions and Release Channels
• Send expo updates securely to the server and decide later when / how to release to users
• Roll back to a previous update
• Get insight on how many client app downloaded the update, see your changes being released in realtime
• Get a ton of info on the update, including git branch, commit, package.json and app.json information
• Assisted app configuration with self-signed certificate generator.
• All from a simple Web interface

Monitor client updates in realtime

A lot of useful information on every update

Details on dependencies to avoid incompatible updates

Roll Back to a previous update

Install / Setup

Play around in Dev

If you have Docker installed you clone this project you and play around by running yarn in the root folder and then running yarn dev:run to start the Docker/development docker compose. Web credentials are admin/devserver (admin password is set in the docker-compose file).

Deploy on your server

If you use Docker you can find a production-ready docker-compose files under the Docker folder, just copy Docker/production on your server, set your secrets / credentials and you are ready to go. The two docker images are public and ready to go. Explanation for the Environment settings is in the docker-compose file

Otherwise you can build from code, there's a NodeJS API server under the API folder and a React / Vite web project under the Web foder.

Add your app

Use the web interface to add your application, just enter the expo slug name

Setup a script to publish updates

You can download the ready to use publish script or create your own, the script logic is simple:

• use expo publish --experimental-bundle to generate an update
• Add app.json and package.json to the build folder
• Zip the build folder
• use curl to push the zip file to the server

Generate Self Signed certificate and private key

In order to validate the update expo needs a certificate.pem inside your app and a private key on the update server. Use the SERVER CONFIGURATION section to generate a new self-signed key, make sure to SAVE, then downlaod both key and back them up!

Configure your app

It is necessary to configure your app.json with the provided keys from the APP CONFIGURATION section. Make sure to have a runtime version specified.

If you are on an Ejected project you can run expo prebuild to autogenerate the code in android-manifest.xml and Expo.plist, otherwise use the provided settings in the APP CONFIGURATION with the autogenerated code.

Build a new app

Updates don't work in dev / expo app, you need to build a new app to test the system. You can use the provided examples (Managed and Ejected) in the relative folders. The provided example app have a button to request and download an update if present, and another button to reload the app. It is expected that an app will automatically do this operation on start, check out expo-custom-updater

IMPORTANT: During development you may get certificate issues when loading the JS bundle from your computer, there are two options:

On EXPO >= 49: you can now start the development server specifying your private signing key using the following command:

npx expo start --private-key-path (path to the private key)

(Thanks @SMhdAsadi )

Alternatively you may allow unsigned manifests by editing Expo.plist and AndroidManifest.xml:

AndroidManifest.xml

    <meta-data android:name="expo.modules.updates.CODE_SIGNING_ALLOW_UNSIGNED_MANIFESTS" android:value="true"/>

Expo.plist

<key>EXUpdatesConfigCodeSigningAllowUnsignedManifests</key>
<true/>

Remember to set those back to false before staging / production build!.

Once the app pings the update server you will see an update appearing in the homepage, and after an update / download / reload cycle the updated app will reflect in the dashboar AFTER it asks for an update again.

Publish and release an update

This part should be the simplest: call the provided script with appropiate parameters and see your update pop in the web UI. Release, rollback or delete the updates and see the clients updating in the homepage.

Monitor the update being downloaded by your client in realtime

Configure the throttle value in docker-compose Environment in order to slow down updates (in case you have thousands of users) to avoid overloads. Default throttle is no more than one dashboard update every 5 seconds.

Contribute

Feel free to clone, costomize and send back PRs!

Have fun!