Read .mobileprovisioning profile with Objective-C

Question

So, I'm trying to open a .mobileprovisioning profile to read what's inside... this is what I'm doing:

NSString *path = [pathURL path];
NSData *data = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] contentsAtPath:path];

Of course I get the data read but I'm not finding the way of getting of get this data into something useful... an NSDictionary, an NSString or whatever...

I've already tried:

NSString *newStr = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:data encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];

Any idea? I'm sure this is an encoding issue, but I can't solve it after reading and googling for some time... I think the provisioning profile is saved as hexadecimal, but I don't know how to read that from objective-c. I have found this but there wasn't an useful answer.

How to convert NData populated with hex values to NSString

Thanks!

Answer 1

The following method should do what you want. As @rbrockerhoff says the mobile provisioning profile is an encoded CMS message. This method uses a decoder to first decode the data using the CMS functions and then creates the plist string/contents from the decoded data. This string can then be converted into a dictionary which is returned from the method. The dictionary will contain all the details from the mobile provisioning profile.

- (NSDictionary *)provisioningProfileAtPath:(NSString *)path {
    CMSDecoderRef decoder = NULL;
    CFDataRef dataRef = NULL;
    NSString *plistString = nil;
    NSDictionary *plist = nil;

    @try {
        CMSDecoderCreate(&decoder);
        NSData *fileData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:path];
        CMSDecoderUpdateMessage(decoder, fileData.bytes, fileData.length);
        CMSDecoderFinalizeMessage(decoder);
        CMSDecoderCopyContent(decoder, &dataRef);
        plistString = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:(__bridge NSData *)dataRef encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
        NSData *plistData = [plistString dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
        plist = [NSPropertyListSerialization propertyListWithData:plistData options:NSPropertyListImmutable format:nil error:nil]
    }
    @catch (NSException *exception) {
        NSLog(@"Could not decode file.\n");
    }
    @finally {
        if (decoder) CFRelease(decoder);
        if (dataRef) CFRelease(dataRef);
    }

    return plist;
}

Answer 2

A .mobileprovisioning file is an encoded CMS message.

See https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/security/Reference/CryptoMessageRef/Reference/reference.html for details and an API for decoding it.

If you just want the encoded property list as text, a quick-and-dirty hack is to get the byte pointer for your NSData, scan for the beginning "<?xml" and up to the closing "</plist>". Then make a NSString from that.