IOS application distribution and internal testing (1)

IOS application distribution and internal testing (1)

Today, I will use a few blogs to explain how to implement the distribution and internal testing of iOS apps. This will be detailed, not just by clicking a few mouse to complete the task, some of these technologies or concepts will also be explained. When we develop an iOS application, we do not immediately launch it to the App Store. This is a big risk, and Apple may reject it. An important step before going online is to distribute and test applications. This means that all developers in the group or other employees in the company (PM, testing, marketing personnel, etc) install this application for an internal test. This will expose a large number of problems, and then you can modify and debug them. It will be officially launched only after the internal test is completed.

There are many such internal testing platforms, and large companies may have their own internal testing platforms. However, independent developers such as ours can only use public platforms, such as dandelion and Pre. im. Next I will mainly use the dandelion platform for distribution.

As a personal test, you need to buy an apple developer account, that is, 99 knives (668 RMB) and buy one individual account. In this way, you can add 100 devices to your Development Account as the testing machine. Of course, you 'd better have one or more iOS devices for App installation testing.

This blog explains some basic concepts first:

(1) ipa File

The ipa file is the installation package file of the iOS app. Whether the ipa file can be correctly packaged with the extension. IPA is the key to determining whether the IPA file can be correctly installed after it is uploaded to dandelion. The ipa file can be understood as the apk file in Android. The truth is the same.

(2) certificate

For an application that has not launched the App Store, if a developer needs to install the application on a certain user's device, the developer needs to export the application as an installation package that can be directly installed on these devices (. the installation package can be exported correctly, which determines whether the application can be correctly installed on the device. One of the most critical factors is the certificate (signature method) used by the application when the installation package is exported ).

You can use the following two signature methods to export the application installation package:

1. Ad-hoc Mode

2. In-house mode

Which method is used depends on the type of the developer's apple account. For example, if a developer has an apple developer's personal developer account (I am), you can use the Ad-hoc method. If you have an apple enterprise developer account, you can use the In-house method. The certificate types supported by the apple developer account are as follows:

.

 

Differences between the three types of certificate signatures:

So far, Apple has provided three types of Certificate Signing methods for iOS apps, each of which has a unique purpose. These three types are:

1. Ad-hoc

2. In-house

3. App-Store

Dandelion is displayed as the beta version, Enterprise Edition, and App-Store edition based on the certificate package. The differences between the three types of certificates are shown in the following table:

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(3) UDID

A udid is a serial number consisting of a child mother and a number. It is used to differentiate every unique iOS device, including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. These codes seem to be random and are actually associated with the features of hardware devices. A typical UDID is as follows:

37f2f993bae681636e30e74b04d6b8955ba36f29

How can I obtain the UDID of an iOS device?

The UDID can be obtained through iTunes or Xcode, but the first two are troublesome because they both need to be connected by mobile phones or computers. Dandelion provides a simple tool to get UDID, directly in the browser into: http://www.pgyer.com/udid. You can easily get the current device UDID.

(4) UDID and Ad-hoc

If the iOS device needs to be installed and packaged as an Ad-hoc iOS application, you must add the UDID of the device to the certificate file (. mobileprovision file. How can I obtain the. mobileprovision file later.

I have a general understanding of the above concepts for distribution and internal testing. I will perform the operations in the following blog.