iOS APNS Development [sandbox] vs Production

52
votes

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.

2
iospush-notificationapple-push-notificationsprovisioning-profilep12
FWIW If you were to look in the list of your certificates in the dev portal then the production Certificate Type is named: Apple Push Services, while the sandbox's certificate type is named: APNs Development iOS – Honey

2 Answers

44
votes

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
23
votes

dminones' answer is very accurate. I want to point out that you can now use production cert in development. The difference is that you will send to 'gateway.sandbox.push.apple.com' for development and 'gateway.push.apple.com' for production. I think the reason for separating sandbox and production is to avoid sending test push notifications to real users. Imagine you do blast notifications, all of your users will have the notification.