AppId and the Bundle Identifier

Yes. Your bundle identifier should uniquely identify both your organization and product. A "*" does none of these things.

No, entering * is fine.

You just need to ensure that you specify a unique Bundle ID in your Xcode project, which will be automatically appended to App ID.

The docs say to enter just * if you want to sign multiple apps with the same App ID. I also suspect that using a wildcard App ID is what got my Ad Hoc distribution working finally. (Either that or it was my dragging my provision to iTunes instead of Xcode, which seems unlikely.)

It's perfectly valid.

If you're talking about the code signing junk then I can see that, but actually using a * in an actual bundle would not be a good idea for anyone.

I have a problem getting my app published to the app store and am wondering if the bundle identifier may be the problem.

App Loader goes fine and says it was uploaded but status stays as waiting for upload.

Has anyone else had the same problem?

Yes, I have the exact same problem. An upgrade for my app is marked as "Waiting for Upload". Many days later, received an email from Apple saying that my bundle identifier is not unique, but it is not true. It is unique because my original submission would not be accepted otherwise. Have been stuck in "Waiting for Upload" for more than a week.

You might want to tell Apple then. Page 35 of the User Guide:

"If you wish to build and distribute multiple applications, it is necessary that you create a wildcard App ID in the Program Portal with only an asterisk in the Bundle Identifier field."

As I am new to plist and bundle identifiers, could you point in the place to find out what is wrong?

My company name is Rob Rightmyer, can I put a space in the bundle identifier?

Thanks for all the help

No on spaces I think. The doc Apple pointed me to was:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPRuntimeConfig/Artic les/PListKeys.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20001431-102070

which says:

{quote}
CFBundleIdentifier

This key identifies the type of the bundle. This identifier should be a uniform type identifier (UTI) string, for example com.mycompany.MyApp. This key does not uniquely identify a specific bundle in the file system, as multiple copies of an application with the same or different version may exist. See Uniform Type Identifiers Overview for details on UTIs.

The preferences system uses this string to identify the application for which a given preference applies. Launch Services uses the bundle identifier to locate an application capable of opening a particular file, using the first application it finds with the given identifier.
{quote}

Mine ended up being com.mycompany.CheckWord (yes, somehow I ended up with "mycompany", not sure how). I needed to re-enter this for my update to upload.

I'm not sure though if there is a difference if you start with a wildcard app ID. It would seem like you would still need a UTI to identify the bundle.

Note that there are two different "bundle identifiers" we're are talking about here.

One is that used to create the App ID in the Portal. That can be * and is what the original question was about.

The other is the CFBundleIdentifier, which is defined in your app's Xcode project and should be unique.

Aha, I see what's going on. Apps are identified in the app store with a unique bundle identifier. That's set in info.plist, and by default it's:

com.yourcompany.${PRODUCT_NAME:identifier}

Which for me resolves to:
com.yourcompany.CheckWord

(Note that "yourcompany" is actually the string "yourcompany, not some macro that is replaced by your actually company name.)

To sign your code you need an App ID that contains a string that matches the bundle ID. In this case it could be any of the following three strings.

com.yourcompany.CheckWord
com.yourcompany.*
*

If you are going to have more than one application, then Apple recommends you use a wildcard. To simplify matters further, they now recommend you just use "*"

In order for your app to go into the App store, it needs a unique Bundle ID. In my case I made a mistake in leaving the Bundle ID as com.yourcompany.CheckWord, as that's not unique enough (imagine there might be a few com.yourcompany.Flashlight ids, if everyone did that). However it got accepted, and that's the ID I'm stuck with for updates to Checkword.

So ideally what I should have done is enter a * in the Bundle Identifier field of the App Id generator, and use com.mickwest.CheckWord as my Bundle Identifier in info.plist.

I would then use the same wildcard App Id for all future apps I develop.

I tried all this and still my app since 7/10 is at waiting for upload.

my bundle id is com.robrightmyer.TicTacKnoe and it gets signed and the app loader says it went.

Has anyone gotten a response or help from apple to help resolve the issues?

I had two responses from Apple, relating to an app update that was stuck at "waiting for upload"

Firstly, after about three days:

{quote}
Thank you for your recent binary submission to the App Store. Unfortunately we discovered an issue with your binary that you will need to correct in order for your application to proceed to the review stage. The specific issue is outlined below:

Missing Embedded Profile - There are two documents on the iPhone Dev Center that should help you resolve this issue. They have recently been updated with new information that you might not have seen even if you have read them before. The documents are entitled, "Migrating from iPhone OS beta 6" and "Building and Distributing Multiple OS X iPhone Applications". Please follow the instructions in these documents carefully to ensure that your application bundle has the correct structure.

Once you have corrected the issue, please use Application Loader to upload the new binary. If any other issues are found with your submission you will be contacted.
{quote}

So I did all that, seemingly with no change, but a day later got:

{quote}
Thank you for your recent binary submission to the App Store. Unfortunately we discovered an issue with your binary that you will need to correct in order for your application to proceed to the review stage. The specific issue is outlined below:

Attempting to Change Bundle Identifier - Once a version of your application has been made available for sale on the store, you must use the same bundle identifier (as specified via the key CFBundleIdentifier in the bundle's Info.plist file) for all updates to that application; any bundle uploaded for that application that has a different bundle identifier will fail validation and not go live for sale. For more information about bundle identifiers, the CFBundleIdentifier key, and the Info.plist file, see Apple's Runtime Configuration Guidelines at http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPRuntimeConfig/BPRun timeConfig.html
{quote}

Which was helpful (my Bundle identifier was indeed wrong, see above). My app went to "in review" five minutes after uploading a version with the correct bundle identifier.