Question

I hired an objective-c programmer to develop my iphone app, he wrote the code, and now I want to test the push notification service, but he wouldn’t send me the p12 file, he said he cant send me the p12 key, because it contains his private key.

1) So can I create the p12 file myself, if so how can I do this? doesn’t it need to be attached to the app? I need the app’s id?

2) Can I just add him as a developer under my apple’ developer account so he can set up everything?

Answer 1

1. The key used with APNS does not need to be the same key used for signing apps. It should not be the key used for signing apps, since it will end up installed on a virtual server on third-party hardware in a fourth-party data center. You might even want to use different development and production keys, if more people will have access to the development server (e.g. developers might run it on their own computers as necessary for debugging).

   You can create the keypair, send him the CSR, get him to create the cert and send that to you, and use the cert on your server.

2. You’ll need to set the app up under your own account at some point anyway (assuming you’re not going to pay him to support it indefinitely) so you might as well do it now. Depending on how much you trust him, you can add him as a developer or just do it all yourself.

I’m pretty sure you can also give accounts restricted permissions – just enough to upload a CSR, create an “iPhone Development” cert, and download provisioning profiles. You can do the rest (add UDIDs, set up app IDs, and configure provisioning profiles), right?