What is an Apple .CSR? (Certificate Signing Request) and how to generate one from scratch.

When you start in the Development of iOS applications , and you want to publish your first application , you run into topics such as certificates , keys , profiles , and one of the most used certificates , is the Certificate Signing Request , but what is ..?

The CERTIFICATE SIGNING REQUEST , also known as CSR, is a message sent by an applicant to the certificate authority to request the digital identity certificate. It uses the Public Key Infrastructure, the policies to create, manage and distribute the digital certificate. The CSR contains the certificate request information, the signature algorithm and the digital signature of the applicant to prevent a fake certificate from being requested.

This is the reason why Apple asks us to generate this certificate, so in a secure way, different services can be linked to the app we create, such as Push Notifications, Sign in with Apple, or Apple payments.

Ok , then let’s generate our certificate .
From Spotlight (Space + ⌘) we type Keychain Access

Already in Keychain Access
Choose Keychain Access
Certificate Assistant
Request a Certificate From a Certificate Authority.

Proceed to fill in the information such as email address, name and country.
Select the “Saved to disk.” option.
Specify a filename and click Save.

Once the task is finished, we will be able to see our created file (a nice tuxedo).

But, as we always want more, we will also see how to create a .csr, but from the Mac console.

BONUS.

Open the Mac console , from Spotlight (Space + ⌘) , and then type Terminal

To work better let’s type “clear” and enter
Now write “openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout server.key -out server.csr”

Now we start to fill in the information, following the tips, and that would be all, we can see our .CSR created.

I hope this post has been very useful.

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Keep Apple Coding!