ios - Get the EXPIRATION date of a Provisioning Profile at Run-time?

Question

I have an app that I routinely pass out to testers via the ad-hoc distribution method. Some of these testers are 'on the ball' and know enough about provisioning profiles and the quarterly expirations and can (if I forget) give me a nudge to rebuild a new version for them to test.

However some of the users always seem to get to the point where it stops running and then bitch and moan about it - despite them probably dismissing the iOS level reminder.

My question is can I programatically get hold of the expiry date at runtime and do my own 'in-app' alerts or system notifications to remind them to pull down the newer version?

Answer 1

You are looking for something like

"<key>ExpirationDate</key><date>2014-12-06T00:26:10Z</date>" in [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"embedded" ofType:@"mobileprovision"]

But getting there is not easy! This code could be improved, parts of it were based on other stackoverflow posts. Note: Another option would be to load everything between item plist and /plist into ...a plist (dictionary). But since we're already there, we just find the sibling by hand.

- (NSString*) getExpiry{

    NSString *profilePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"embedded" ofType:@"mobileprovision"];
    // Check provisioning profile existence
    if (profilePath)
    {
        // Get hex representation
        NSData *profileData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:profilePath];
        NSString *profileString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@", profileData];

        // Remove brackets at beginning and end
        profileString = [profileString stringByReplacingCharactersInRange:NSMakeRange(0, 1) withString:@""];
        profileString = [profileString stringByReplacingCharactersInRange:NSMakeRange(profileString.length - 1, 1) withString:@""];

        // Remove spaces
        profileString = [profileString stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@" " withString:@""];


        // Convert hex values to readable characters
        NSMutableString *profileText = [NSMutableString new];
        for (int i = 0; i < profileString.length; i += 2)
        {
            NSString *hexChar = [profileString substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(i, 2)];
            int value = 0;
            sscanf([hexChar cStringUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding], "%x", &value);
            [profileText appendFormat:@"%c", (char)value];
        }

        // Remove whitespaces and new lines characters
        NSArray *profileWords = [profileText componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]];

        //There must be a better word to search through this as a structure! Need 'date' sibling to <key>ExpirationDate</key>, or use regex
        BOOL sibling = false;
        for (NSString* word in profileWords){
            if ([word isEqualToString:@"<key>ExpirationDate</key>"]){
                NSLog(@"Got to the key, now need the date!");
                sibling = true;
            }
            if (sibling && ([word rangeOfString:@"<date>"].location != NSNotFound)) {
                NSLog(@"Found it, you win!");
                NSLog(@"Expires: %@",word);
                return word;
            }
        }

    }

    return @"";
}