Instant Passbook App Development for iOS How-to will get you up and running with Passbook, Apple's digital wallet, introduced in iOS. Passbook provides a way for users to collect and organize coupons, store cards, event tickets, and boarding passes, and your product or service can take advantage of this opportunity. This book will explain the Passbook infrastructure, lead you through creating your first Pass, covering delivering your Passes to users, and keeping them up-to-date.
Understanding Passbook (Simple) introduces you to Passbook. Apple's Passbook feature is a collection of technologies that come together to provide digital wallet functionality to the user. We will understand what Passbook consists of, from both the user and Pass creator perspective.
Setting up your environment (Simple) guides you through creating a Pass. Creating your first Pass will require cryptographic keys and certificates, managed through Apple's Developer Portal. You will be lead through this, preparing everything needed to create your first Pass.
Creating your Pass (Medium) covers all the elements that go into a Pass. You will be taken through the creation of a Pass from beginning to end.
Signing your Pass (Simple) explains how to digitally sign the Pass package content. To be accepted into the Passbook app, a Pass must be cryptographically signed with the developer's certificate. We will sign the newly created Pass with the certificate prepared from your Apple Developer account.
Delivering your Pass via e-mail (Medium) explores how Passes can be delivered as e-mails. Once created, your Pass needs to be delivered to your users. We will send an e-mail with your Pass attached, in a way that allows it to be opened directly into Passbook.
Delivering your Pass via a web link (Medium) shows you how to configure your web server to serve up Passes to your users. This will allow Passes to be delivered though links from your website.
Delivering your Pass via an app (Medium) shows how Passes can be delivered through a companion iOS app. We will use the PassKit framework available in iOS to present a Pass to the user in a companion app. From there the Pass can be added into the Passbook App.
Updating a Pass within the Passbook app (Advanced) will implement a REST API in Ruby that matches Apple's defined specification. This will allow Passes to be updated when circumstances change.
Mac OSX (version 10.8.2 or greater recommended)
Git Version Control
A web hosting service; for example, Heroku (http://www.heroku.com)
An Apple iOS Developer account (http://developer.apple.com/ios)
This book is intended for those looking to take advantage of Passbook, the latest feature in iOS. Readers with familiarity with the iOS platform and with programming concepts will get the most from this book. While you will be lead through each part of the process step-by-step, readers with experience in building and packaging apps for the iOS platform will find familiar concepts.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Pass files with the -pkpass file extension will open in a preview window."
A block of code is set as follows:
if (![PKPassLibraryisPassLibraryAvailable]) {
NSLog(@"Passbook not available on this device");
return;
}Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
cd passbook_rails_example bundle
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Clicking on the Add to Passbook button will place the Pass in the Passbook associated with the iCloud account set up in OSX system preferences".
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