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Learning iPad Programming: Provisioning Your iPad

Dec 13, 2011

📄 Contents

␡

About the iOS Provisioning Portal
The Provisioning Process: A Brief Overview
Setting Up Your Development Machine
Setting Up Your Device
Using the iOS Provisioning Portal
Summary

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The Provisioning Process: A Brief Overview

Provisioning a new device is not difficult in and of itself, but there are a number of steps that must be performed first. You must be a paid member of the iOS Developer Program or be a team member of a company that is a paid member. You must request and install a development certificate on your development machine. You must register your device ID. You must create an App ID. You must create and install a development provisioning profile. All of this must be done before you can provision your iPad and run your application on it.

Luckily you do not have to perform each of these steps often. Some of the steps, such as requesting and installing a development certificate, need to be done only once a year, and Xcode performs other steps for you as needed. Still, knowing about each step helps when a problem does come up, and yes, you will encounter a problem with the process at some point in your iOS career. It’s just the nature of writing apps for mobile devices.

You’ve had a number of new terms thrown your way, such as device ID, App ID, and provisioning profile, but what exactly are these?

What Is a Device ID?

A device ID, also known as the Unique Device Identifier or UDID for short, is a 40-character string that uniquely identifies the device. The UDID is tied to a single device; no two devices will ever share the same device ID. The device ID is added to a provisioning profile. This restricts applications built with the provisioning profile to run on only the devices associated to the profile.

You register devices in the iOS Provisioning Portal. You can register up to 100 devices per year. The devices you register are for development and testing purposes only. You do not register the devices of your customers who download and install your application through the App Store.

Registering a device counts toward your yearly limit even if you remove the device. Say you register your iPad, then delete it from the list of registered devices. It still counts toward your annual limit of registered devices. If after deleting your iPad UDID from the list you decide to add it back, it will count again toward your yearly limit. Put another way, deleting a device does not reduce the number of registered devices for the year.

What Is an App ID?

The App ID is used during the development and provisioning processes to share Keychain data among a suite of applications, and it is used for document sharing, syncing, and configuration of iCloud. The App ID also allows the application to communicate with the Push Notification Service and external hardware accessories.

The App ID is the combination of a Bundle Seed ID and a Bundle Identifier. The Bundle Seed ID is a universally unique, ten-character, alphanumeric string. Its value is generated by Apple within the iOS Provisioning Portal. The Bundle Identifier is a string value you add to your application bundle. The Bundle Identifier is used by the operating system to identify your application for tasks such as applying application updates.

The common naming convention for the Bundle Identifier is the reverse domain name style. If your company name is Acme and your application name is Awesome App, you would define the Bundle Identifier as com.acme.awesomeApp.

The Bundle Identifier portion of the App ID can contain the wildcard character (*). The wildcard character, if used, must be the last character of the Bundle Identifier, for example, com.acme.*. Using the wildcard character allows the App ID, and its associated provisioning profiles, to be used with multiple applications.

A wildcard App ID is convenient because it can be used for multiple applications. Xcode’s Organizer window creates a wildcard App ID that can be used by any application. The App ID looks like the last example in Table 6.1.

Table 6.1. App ID Examples

App ID	Remarks
ABCDE12345.com.acme.awesomeApp	An explicit App ID for Acme’s Awesome App
ABCDE12345.com.acme.*	A wildcard App ID for Acme applications
ABCDE12345.*	A wildcard App ID for all applications

You can also create an explicit App ID. An explicit App ID restricts the provisioning profile to a single application. Certain Apple services such as Push Notification and In App Purchase require an explicit App ID. If you plan to use an Apple service, you must use an explicit App ID.

Changing from a Wildcard to an Explicit App ID

You can change from a wildcard App ID to an explicit ID. You may find that you need to do this if, for example, you decide to add Game Center support to your application after it has been released. While you will be changing the App ID, you must not change the Bundle ID as defined in your application’s info.plist. The Bundle ID defined in the app is used to identify your application for new releases, that is, updates to your application. Changing this breaks the app update process, and Apple will reject your app update submission if the Bundle ID changes.

Changing the Bundle ID suffix in the App ID is not the same as changing the Bundle ID in the application. This is why you can safely switch from a wildcard App ID to an explicit App ID. Changing the App ID’s Bundle ID suffix does not change the application’s real Bundle ID.

To change from a wildcard App ID, you must create a new App ID. You can use the same Bundle Seed ID or generate a new one. For the Bundle ID suffix, enter the bundle ID exactly as it is defined in your application’s info.plist.

Because you now have a new App ID, you need to create a new provisioning profile that uses the new App ID.

What Is a Development Provisioning Profile?

A development provisioning profile ties developers, devices, and App IDs to a development team. A provisioning profile makes it possible for the developer to install and run the application on a device for the purpose of debugging and testing. To make this possible, the development provisioning profile must be installed on the device. A device, however, can contain more than one development provisioning profile.

Now that you understand the pieces, let’s get your development computer and device ready.

Do I Need a Dedicated Development Device?

A common question asked by new iOS developers is whether a dedicated development device is needed or not. The answer to this question depends entirely on you. Many iOS developers own only one device, but many other developers own multiple devices.

I have seven devices at the time of this writing: two iPads, three iPod touches (a first gen, a second gen, and a fourth generation), one iPhone 3GS, and one iPhone 4 CDMA. I use the older iPod touches to test my applications on older versions of iOS. I use the fourth-gen iPod touch to test on the latest version of iOS and to test retina display images. I usually keep one iPad up-to-date with the latest public release of iOS, and I use the other iPad, which is my primary iPad development device, to run beta versions of iOS. And I use my iPhone 3GS for testing on a phone, which can behave differently from an iPod touch, receiving incoming phone calls and SMS messages, for example.

I write a number of client apps, and my clients have different requirements, which is why I have multiple devices—and that number is growing every few months as I continue to buy new devices. It’s doubtful that the average iOS developer needs this many devices. You can produce your application using only one device. However, there are advantages to having a dedicated development device.

I find I often need to reset my device to factory-install state, or I want to test my app on the latest beta release of iOS. You can still do this while owning only one device, but it does mean your device is constantly changing. That game you bought last night and got halfway through gets deleted when you reset your device, or your favorite app crashes on the new iOS beta release. This can be frustrating if your development device is your only device and you use the device for personal reasons.

Because of this, it is helpful—and it saves you time—to own devices dedicated to development purposes. Owning multiple devices, however, can get expensive, especially for the iPad. That’s why I typically buy used devices for development. The Apple Refurbish Store is a good place to shop for used devices at an affordable price. Also, ask family and friends what they plan to do with their old devices if they are upgrading to newer hardware. This might be an opportunity to score a development device for free or close to free.

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