How to submit your app to the Apple AppStore? (Beginner)

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1. Certificates / keys / provisioning profiles and building process
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Follow this tutorial from Corona Labs: Provisioning and Building — iOS

Corona offers a nice video on the process: Building for iOS Devices

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2. Setup Your app
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Log into developer.apple.com and go to “iTunes connect” and “Manage Your Apps” and set up your app. You should have all the necessary information by this time to set up the app correctly. You’ll need to keep the mobile provisioning identifier handy… what ever you decided to use.
e.g. com.name.silly_app
Once you enter all the information about your app and submit, the app will be in the “Preparing to Upload” state.
Before you build your app from the Corona simulator you MUST click on the “Ready to Upload” button/link. Which you’ll find by clicking into the app you just setup in iTunes Connect.

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3. Build
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Make sure you have your app done and have created icons and default screen (if needed) – the Project Properties window in Kwik helps you to do that. Then, in Corona Simulator, go to File->Build (you have learned about it above).
Once the build is complete, which creates the .zip that the Application Loader needs, it should prompt the next step for uploading to iTunes Connect. Just follow the prompts and you will be done.

ADVANCED TIPS

One of our user, known in the forums as Hayzie, was kind enough to share all the steps to get success while creating certificates and submitting an app. Here’s his guest posting:

After having some trouble uploading my app to iTunes Connect I was asked by some users to do a tutorial of the steps I went through, so here it is.

I am by no means an expert in this. I’m not a coder and this is the first time I’ve uploaded an app. I just like to figure things out and understand them.
That being said, I’m sure there are many other ways to do this but this is the one that worked for me. I hope it will work for me next time too

I’ve tried to remember all the steps I went through (cutting out the ones that sent me in circles). So I hope it helps someone else save a bit of time, if not and I’ve missed something, let me know and it might have been a step I forgot to put in.

This is the step by step that I followed (found it online) with changes to the bits that steered me wrong or didn’t work with our process in Kwik.

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Quick Hints
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Make sure you have the latest versions of Xcode, Corona and Kwik
No spaces in your development folder names. (Including parent folders all the way down to the root of the hard drive.)
Voodoo: You may have to be signed in to the provisioning portal (via safari) when using Application Loader.
Before the running the Application Loader, your app must be in “Ready to Upload” status in itunes connect.
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1. Clean up your certificates / keys / provisioning profiles.
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Open “Keychain Access” and find your old “dist” and “dev” certificates and remove them (You’ll make new ones.) The certs in Keychain are named “iPhone Distribution: Your Name” and iPhone Developer: Your Name”
Keychain > (Side Bar: Category) > Certificates (or “my certificates”)
You can also click in “Keys”
Key Chain > (Side Bar: Category) > Keys
…and remove the keys that just say Your Name.
The trick I missed the first 30 times of trying to build my app was to find the extra certs that didn’t show in the above steps. So click Certificates then type ‘iPhone’ in the top right search area and it should show any you missed.
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2. Reboot
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It’s a voodoo thing. Rebooting is fun too!
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3. Create new certificates.
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Yes, go ahead and revoke the old ones, then follow the steps to get new ones. You’ll need one for “development” and one for “distribution”. Be sure to have your exact name and email used for your iOS account.
iOS Prov Portal > (Side Bar: Certificates) Create new or revoke
wait a few minutes then refresh and follow the instructions.
NOTES:
— Pay close attention to the name and email address you use when setting up your certificates. (Use the ones you used when setting up your developer account.)
— When creating the certificate authority request files, use the same names and emails as above. You can use the same certificate you download from iTunes Connect for both development and distribution certs.
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4. Set up your App IDs
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Use something that looks like com.name.myappname
(Like a regular web address, but backwards. You don’t need an actual domain name, just make one up.)
NOTE: Don’t put any of this info in your Corona “build.settings” file as plist keys… Corona takes care of all that when you build by reading the mobileprovisioning profile data.
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5. Provisioning
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– Jump through the hoops to get the files. Make all three kinds: dev, hoc and store. Just to cover your bases.
– It’s handy using friendly reminder names for your provisioning profile titles like:
silly_app_dev
silly_app_hoc
silly_app_store
That way you can easily identify which files are which.
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6. Check what you’ve got
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Don’t install any of the provisioning profiles or certificates until your sure you’ve got everything handy.
You should have the following files:
– developer_identity.cer
– distribution_identity.cer
– silly_app_hoc.mobileprovision
– silly_app_dev.mobileprovision
– silly_app_store.mobileprovision
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7. Don’t install the files
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This is the part the messed me up. The original step by step had me drag and drop and install the certs and profiles.
Once you have created them in iTunes Connect just open “Organizer” Xcode > Window > Organizer and click the refresh icon in the bottom right.
Then you should see the certs n Keychain and profiles in Organizer.
I found if you install them manually (double click or drag and drop) you end up with duplicates. Which is what caused my problems.
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8. Setup Your app
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Log into developer.apple.com and go to “iTunes connect” and “Manage Your Apps” and set up your app. You should have all the necessary information by this time to set up the app correctly. You’ll need to keep the mobile provisioning identifier handy… what ever you decided to use.
e.g. com.name.silly_app
Once you enter all the information about your app and submit, the app will be in the “Preparing to Upload” state.
Before you build your app from the Corona simulator you MUST click on the “Ready to Upload” button/link. Which you’ll find by clicking into the app you just setup in iTunes Connect.
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9. Build
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Follow the instructions in the Corona docs for creating the app. You’ve been pretty much doing the build for iTunes when doing the test build of your app for on your device. Just with a couple of alterations.
I haven’t been using Corona long enough to know but apparently the export works a lot better than it used to.
Once the build is complete, which creates the .zip that the Application Loader needs, it should prompt the next step for uploading to iTunes Connect. Just follow the prompts and you will be done.

IMPORTANT: If you get the ” application failed codesign verification ” error, check that your Corona project folder and the folder that your outputting the “app” file to doesn’t have any spaces or funcky characters…. including the full system path.
Good:
/User/boob/Desktop/silly_app/main.lua
/User/boob/Desktop/silly_app/silly_app.app
Bad:
/User/name/Desktop/I’m dumb/silly app i’m working on/main.lua
/User/name/Desktop/I’m dumb/build the silly app/my silly.app
All other errors refering to issues with certificates are due to complications with multiple mobile provisioning profiles, certificates and keys in Key Chain and XCODE so check them all again.
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I hope this helps some of you with the upload process. For me it seemed like it was a lot harder than actually making my App with Kwik haha.
Good luck and I look forward to seeing your apps in the store.

Thanks a lot Hayzie!