iOS APNS Development [sandbox] vs Production

ios push-notification apple-push-notifications provisioning-profile p12
Eugene picture Eugene · Feb 17, 2015 · Viewed 25.6k times · Source

Guys I'm having some trouble figuring out the key differences between the APNS (push notification) Developer (Sandbox) and Production modes. In particular I have the following questions:

1) Can I launch an app on the app-store with Push Notifications that is only registered for the APNS Developer Certificate? Or do I need to use to use APNS Production for apps I want to launch on the app store?

2) In general, what are the functional reasons other than "development on development APNS" and "production on production APNS" that would inform my decision. In particular why would I choose to implement an APNS Developer certificate for my app at all and why not just run everything on a Production push account?

Here's what Apple says on it's website but it doesn't get to the heart of my question:

Development: Use the development environment for initial development and testing of the provider app. It provides the same set of services as the production environment, although with a smaller number of server units. The development environment also acts as a virtual device, enabling simulated end-to-end testing. You access the development environment at gateway.sandbox.push.apple.com, outbound TCP port 2195.

Production: Use the production environment when building the production version of the provider app. Apps using the production environment must meet Apple’s reliability requirements.

Answer

dminones picture dminones · Feb 17, 2015

If you want to post your app to the app store you will need to use a Production Provisioning Profile, therefore all notifications sent with APNS Developer Certificate will not arrive to your app signed with a Production Provisioning Profile.

Why not use only a production APNS certificate? Well you can do this but...

  • In order to test you will need to build your app with a Production Ad Hoc Provisioning Profile, this is a lot of extra work at compiling
  • Using a production cert in development, and therefore using an ad-hoc build, you cannot run with the debugger. Makes troubleshooting very painful.
  • Test notifications makes everything goes to production so you have to be extra careful

Related questions

didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken never called on specific device

First of all, I am on iPhone 6 Plus/iOS 8.1 and I've tried everything here: why didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken is not called Still no avail. To summarize: I've checked my bundle identifier matches the one in provisioning profile/development portal I've created a …

Read More
Generate .pem file used to set up Apple Push Notifications

I tried and tried to generate a .pem file, every time generating certificates from the client's account and then generating the .pem file using the terminal, but it's of no use. Can anyone give a step-by-step procedure?

Read More
Get device token for push notification

I am working on push notifications. I wrote the following code for fetching a device token. - (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions { // Override point for customization after application launch. // Add the view controller's view to the window and …

Read More