iOS: Invalid token error for push notifications

Handling gateway errors when testing iOS push

An invalid token error may be given when testing notifications for a development/enterprise build of an iOS App. The most likely cause is that the notification was sent via the wrong gateway due to a misconfiguration, but may also be caused by having a mismatch between the bundle ID of the certificate and the bundle ID of the app.

Gateway misconfiguration

If you have done a development build the problem will be that the app has a sandbox token from Apple, but you are not sending via the APNS sandbox gateway. Apple has two notification gateways: one for sending to development builds (sandbox) and the other for sending to production builds. To test with a development build, you will need to enable sandbox mode when initialising in the App Delegate:

XPush.setSandboxModeEnabled(true)
[XPush setSandboxModeEnabled:YES];

and then select the sandbox gateway in Xtremepush when sending the message. If you have done an ad-hoc or enterprise production build so you can test with the production gateway, the issue will be that you have set sandbox mode and not removed it.

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If you test using development builds then you should turn on Sandbox Mode when testing, as Apple uses a different gateway for builds compiled with a development mobile provisioning profile. If you only do enterprise builds you won't need this. Set sandbox mode in a statement that will only run for development builds as it should not be turned on in production.

You can also turn on debug logs for the SDK in this way:

[XPush registerForRemoteNotificationTypes:types];
// Only runs for development builds sets push to sandbox mode and turns on debug logs
#if DEBUG
    [XPush setSandboxModeEnabled:YES];
    [XPush setShouldShowDebugLogs:YES];
#endif
[XPush applicationDidFinishLaunchingWithOptions:launchOptions];

Bundle ID mismatch

If the gateway setting looks OK then another likely cause is uploading a certificate that targets a bundle ID that is different from that of the app. For example, your app's bundle ID is com.example.app1 but the certificate you have uploaded targets com.example.app2 or com.example.app1.somethingelse.