Question

I’m writing my third app, and I already have an app in the App Store, but I still don’t get this App ID business.

I created the App IDs for my first two applications like this:

XXXXXXXXXX.me.cbg.FirstApp YYYYYYYYYY.me.cbg.SecondApp

but then Apple introduced the App ID wizard, which I used to create the App ID and provisioning profiles for my third application:

ZZZZZZZZZZ.*

So my question is: What is the ‘proper’ way of creating App IDs for three completely independent apps?

Should I use the XXXXXXXXXX.* format or XXXXXXXXXX.me.cbg.*?

Should I create three different App IDs, or just one wildcard ID?

Answer 1

Both are ‘proper’, it’s mostly a question of the tradeoff between ease of management and allowing more granular management of certificates.

There two technical difference:

1. Applications with IDs that are identical save from the top level (e.g. com.mycompany.aaa and com.mycompany.bbb) are able to access each others saved data. If you are writing a suite of applications then this could be extremely useful.

2. You can only create a limited number of ‘AdHoc’ certificates. If your apps have the same wildcard identifier then this limit would be imposed across all your applications.

Personally for a small developer I would recommend using a wildcard ID. It results in a lot less to manage in several areas, and hence removes a lot of potential for mistakes. Remember that for each ID you’ll probably have three individual certificates (dev/adhoc/appstore).

Background:

Every iPhone application must have a unique identifier and certificate. Developers can either create a certificate per application by using a complete name (e.g. com.mycompany.aaa), or they can create a wildcard certificate/ID (e.g. com.mycompany.*) in which case the app name in the .plist file is used to complete the identifier during the DRM process.