iOS App Development Portable Genius

Creating a Digital Identity

The distribution provisioning and App Store preparation process can seem intimidating the first time you work through it. There’s much to remember, and there are no shortcuts. Expect it to take between half a day and two days.

The easy way to approach the process is to work through it methodically. You can’t complete later stages until you complete the earlier steps. The first step is to create a digital identity on your Mac.

Generating a certificate signing request

Although this part of the process is buried in jargon, it’s simple in practice. You need to:

1. Create a file using the Keychain Access Utility on your Mac.

2. Upload the file to the iOS Provisioning Portal.

The Provisioning Portal uses the file—or more specifically, a digital key in the file—when it creates a distribution profile. When Xcode builds the app, it checks your Mac’s keychain to make sure the key in the profile and the key in the keychain match. If they don’t, the build process fails.

Creating a CSR file

Follow these steps:

1. On your Mac, launch the Keychain Access Utility. You can find it in /Applications/Utilities.

2. Select Keychain Access→Certificate Assistant→Request a Certificate from a Certificate Authority.

3. Fill in the details, as shown in Figure 13.2. Use your iOS Developer Program email address. Leave the “CA Email Address” blank. Select the “Saved to disk” option.

4. Click Continue, and save the file to a convenient location.

13.2 Creating a CSR file.