APNS - HTTP/2 Provider Certificate - Effective period

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Created Nov ’20

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Hi team,

I am assisting my customer to implement Apple push (APNS - General). We understand Json web token can be used, however due to some reason, we can only stick to "HTTP/2 provider certificate" method at this moment.

We would like to know how long "HTTP/2 provider certificate" will last for? Will it be affected by the Mar 31, 2021 deadline for the old binary protocol? Thanks

P.S. We understand provider certificate will be renewed annually. We will keep doing it as long as the method is still supported.

Regards,
Winnie

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Answer 1

flmat OP

Mar ’21

You probably figured this out by now, but as far as I understand you are fine with an "HTTP/2 provider certificate".

The Mar 31, 2021 deadline only affects the "legacy binary protocol", in other words certificates that have been created "a long time ago". From what I can see, through the Developer Portal you are only able to create APNs certificates based on HTTP/2, but I'm not an expert on the field. Like I didn't see a checkbox that let's you select "HTTP/2" or something.

Apple Push Notification service SSL (Sandbox & Production)
Establish connectivity between your notification server, the Apple Push Notification service sandbox, and production environments to deliver remote notifications to your app. When utilizing HTTP/2, the same certificate can be used to deliver app notifications, update ClockKit complication data, and alert background VoIP apps of incoming activity. A separate certificate is required for each app you distribute.

In my opinion Apple is doing a not so great job with how they communicate those things. Yes, there is this article which describes both Tokens and Certs, but they do a poor job comparing "legacy certificates" with "HTTP/2 certificates".
Because a lot of blogs out there used to compare things like this:

Auth Tokens (HTTP/2) vs. the legacy way (certificates)

But as we have seen now, the certificate situation is the one that needs to be distinguished more granularly.

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