iOS 7 Programming Cookbook

23.1. Creating Pass Kit Certificates

Problem

You have decided to distribute digitally signed passes to your users and would like to begin with the first step, creating certificates to sign your passes with.

Solution

Create your certificates in the iOS Provisioning Portal.

Discussion

As explained in this chapter’s Introduction, in order to distribute passes to your users, you need to digitally sign them, and before doing that, you need to request a certificate from Apple that will uniquely bind all your passes to your developer account. That way, Apple knows which passes are legitimate and which ones are not.

Follow these steps to create your certificate:

1. Navigate your browser to the iOS Dev Center. I have avoided putting the URL to the iOS Dev Center here, as this URL is subject to change and I don’t want to give you the wrong URL. If you don’t know where this is, simply type it in a search engine and I bet you will find it in a matter of seconds.

2. If you are not logged in already, log in now.

3. Once logged in, go to the Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles page.

4. Navigate to the Identifiers page and then the Pass Type IDs page on the lefthand side of the screen.

5. When you first land there, the page might look empty. Find and press the plus (+) button on the screen.

6. Now, in the Description box, enter text that will describe your Pass Type ID.

7. In the Identifier box, enter a reverse-domain-style identifier of your pass. For instance, if your App ID is com.pixolity.testingpasskit, then for passes that ...