Mobile application delivery lifecycle

The configuration and deployment of a new application release is a process where both the application developer and the Token Server administrator are involved. To enable an application using the SDK to communicate with the Token Server. It has to be configured in the Token Server. Therefore the application developer should know which configuration settings to use in the application that he is building. To simplify things for the application developer the Token Server administrator can prepare and export the application configuration in the Token Server. This configuration is exported as a zip archive which can be used in the SDK tooling to generate the required code and config files.

App delivery lifecycle flow

Application version configuration

A Token Server admin can export the application config via the export button next to an application version in the application view. Downloading a zip file, containing all required information for the SDK, will be initialized when clicking this button. The Token Server administrator is responsible for shipping the zip archive to the application developer.

The configuration which can be exported contains multiple elements. The paragraphs below explain the elements within the zip archive.

Certificates

The SDK provides functionality to PIN your servers' certificate. Please note, if you PIN the servers' certificate itself. You will need to deploy a new version of the application when you change the servers' certificate. The best alternative is to use the intermediate certificate of the Certificate Authority used to get the server certificate (the second level in the certificate chain). This gives you the option to renew the server certificate without having to deploy a new version of the application.

Make sure certificates for both the Token Server and the resource gateway are linked to an application. When the Token Server and resource gateway are both exposed on the same domain and therefore use the same certificate you only need to configure a single certificate.

You can attach a certificate to an application when editing or creating it in the admin console. In the certificates section you can select the certificates you previously uploaded. Check the certificates section for instructions to upload certificates.

Token Server base URI

The Token Server base URI is the URI all requests towards the Token Server start with. Typically this is the host name of the Token Server. This value can be configured using a Docker Compose environment variable TOKEN_SERVER_COMMON/ENGINE-BASE-URI. More information on how to set this variable and the possible values can be found in the properties section.

Resource gateway

To enable the SDK to perform resource calls, it requires a resource gateway base uri. The resource gateway is an Oauth Client itself and has to be configured as web client in the Token Server admin console. The details on how to create and configure a resource gateway can be found in the resource gateway topic. Once a resource gateway is selected for an application, its public base uri will be used in the SDK configuration archive.

Application version details

An application should be able to identify itself towards the Token Server. This is done by sending the application version, platform and identifier. The application configuration archive will contain all these details. Which makes the archive platform, application and version specific.

SDK Integration

Once the application developer has received the application configuration archive, a test build can be made using the Onegini SDK. As the application signature for this build is not configured, the application can only be used in development mode. Using development mode enables functional testing of the application without configuring the correct application signature for each individual build. Once testing and development is completed a more official release can be build. This is the moment, the application developer will need to generate the application signature based on the release version of the application. Please note, that each small change in the application binary will have impact on the application signature. So an application signature has to be generated for each version of the application. This will slow down development. Therefore it is advised to enabling development mode during development of the application.

More details about using the SDK can be found in the platform specific SDK documentation.

Final steps

The Token Server administrator is responsible for the last step in the flow. The configuration of the application signature of the release version of the application. This Application signature must be sent to the Token Server administrator via a secure channel as this is very sensitive information. Development mode must be disabled once the proper application signature is configured for this specific application version. The application should now be able to communicate in a secure way with both the Token Server and resource gateway.