iTunes Connect automatically generating app ID's

Question

We're doing beta testing on a bunch of POC apps at the moment. We're trying to set it up to use one wildcard app ID for all the apps. Everything seems to work well in terms of setting up a wildcard app id and provisioning profile. But when creating an app "profile" in iTunes connect, it insists on us filling in a specific suffix. This in turn creates a new explicit app id in the provisioning portal. Has this changed recently as I dont remember it doing this in the past.

For example. We set up a wildcard like "com.ourcompany.*". When creating a profile in itunes connect we provide "OurApp" in the mandatory suffix field. This in turn creates a com.ourcompany.ourapp explicit app ID in the prov. portal.

Is this correct?

Answer 1

When you create an app ID in iTunes Connect, I believe it does create the app ID for you in the app ID area in the provisioning portal. This is because creating the app ID in iTunes Connect basically reserves that app ID for you to use in the future and prevents any other developers from using that app ID.

I guess my question is why are you creating the app in iTunes connect? If you are just creating a proof of concept app, simply create the project in Xcode, use a development provisioning profile tied to your wildcard app ID to build it, and that should be all you need. Are you using iTunes Connect so that you can do something like TestFlight? If so, you'll have to have explicit IDs in the iTunes Connect site for that, so it is working as expected.

One thing to note is that as long as you aren't using any services that require an explicit app ID (such as iCloud, Push Notifications), you should be fine using the wildcard ID. So just because the explicit app ID is there on the developer site, it doesn't mean you need to use it in your provisioning profile. You certainly can have a provisioning profile tied to the wildcard ID and use it to build an app that also has an explicit ID created on the site.