How to create dev/staging/production environments

Question

I'm trying to create an Xcode project that works in a development environment (using the computer as a local host), staging environment (a specific endpoint on a server), and a production environment (another specific server endpoint). I have found a few different tutorials about how to set this up. Some solutions suggest creating different target, some suggest creating different configurations. What is the most effective way to do this?

Answer 1

Following are the steps to create different schemes

1. Select the target
2. Create new scheme and give specific name to scheme (Dev,Staging,Prod,Debug)

i have attached screen shot for your reference

Sample Screen Shot for reference

if you want to set different url for different schemes then do the following steps:

1.Go to Build Setting

2.Go to user defined section

3.Create macros and specify urls for each environment

Answer 2

1. Duplicate your current project Target and rename like DEV/QA/PROD.

2. Add New Environment.plist into your project. Structure of Environment.plist will be like below.

3. In your service class add method to fetch baseURL according to your target settings. Eg Code:

 NSURL* environmentsURL = [[NSBundle mainBundle] URLForResource:@"Environments" withExtension:@"plist"]; NSDictionary* environments = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfURL:environmentsURL]; NSString* currentEnvironment = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] infoDictionary] objectForKey:@"Environment"]; NSString* keyPath = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@.baseURL", currentEnvironment]; NSString *baseUrlString = [environments valueForKeyPath:keyPath];