iOS How to store username password within an app

Question

I have a login-screen in my iOS app  The username and password will be saved in the NSUserDefaults and be loaded into the login-screen again when you enter the app again  of course  NSUserDefaults are permanent    Now  the user have the possibility to disable the username password saving feature   So the NSUserDefaults will be cleared then   But In my app I need this username password for database queries for the user  So  Where to store the data except NSUserDefaults    This place can   should be deleted when the user quit the app or logout

User · Answer

But  now you can go for NURLCredential instead of keychain wrapper  It does what we need to do

User · Answer

The following should work just fine   KeychainItemWrapper  keychainItem     KeychainItemWrapper alloc  initWithIdentifier   YourAppLogin  accessGroup nil    keychainItem setObject   password you are saving  forKey kSecValueData     keychainItem setObject   username you are saving  forKey kSecAttrAccount

User · Answer

You should always use Keychain to store usernames and passwords  and since it s stored securely and only accessible to your app  there is no need to delete it when app quits  if that was your concern    Apple provides sample code that stores  reads and deletes keychain items and here is how to use the keychain wrapper class from that sample which greatly simplifies using Keychain   Include Security framework  in Xcode 3 right-click on frameworks folder and add existing framework  In Xcode 4 select your project  then select target  go to Build Phases tab and click   under Link Binary With Files  and KeychainItemWrapper  h  amp   m files into your project   import the  h file wherever you need to use keychain and then create an instance of this class   KeychainItemWrapper  keychainItem     KeychainItemWrapper alloc  initWithIdentifier   YourAppLogin  accessGroup nil      YourAppLogin can be anything you chose to call your Keychain item and you can have multiple items if required   Then you can set the username and password using    keychainItem setObject   password you are saving  forKey kSecValueData    keychainItem setObject   username you are saving  forKey kSecAttrAccount     Get them using   NSString  password    keychainItem objectForKey kSecValueData   NSString  username    keychainItem objectForKey kSecAttrAccount     Or delete them using    keychainItem resetKeychainItem

User · Answer

If you need an ARC version of the wrapper here is the link https   gist github com 1170641  Thanks to

User · Answer

To update this question   For those using Swift checkout this drag and drop swift implementation by Mihai Costea supporting access groups    https   github com macostea KeychainItemWrapper swift blob master KeychainItemWrapper swift  Before using the keychain  consider twice before storing passwords  In many cases storing an authentication token  such as a persistence session id  and the email or account name might be enough  You can easily invalidate authentication tokens to block unauthorized access  requiring the user to login again on the compromised device but not requiring reset password and having to login again on all devices  we are not only using Apple are we

User · Answer

I looked at using KeychainItemWrapper  the ARC version  but I didn t find its Objective C wrapper as wholesome as desired   I used this solution by Kishikawa Katsumi  which meant I wrote less code and didn t have to use casts to store NSString values   Two examples of storing    UICKeyChainStore setString   kishikawakatsumi  forKey   username     UICKeyChainStore setString   P455 w0rd 1 G Z   forKey   password      Two examples of retrieving  UICKeyChainStore  store    UICKeyChainStore keyChainStore          or UICKeyChainStore  store    UICKeyChainStore keyChainStoreWithService   YOUR SERVICE     NSString  username    store stringForKey   username    NSString  password    store stringForKey   password

User · Answer

I decided to answer how to use keychain in iOS 8 using Obj-C and ARC   1 I used the keychainItemWrapper  ARCifief version  from GIST  https   gist github com dhoerl 1170641 download - Add   copy  the KeychainItemWrapper h and  m to your project  2  Add the Security framework to your project  check in project   Build phases   Link binary with Libraries   3  Add the security library   import   and KeychainItemWrapper   import  KeychainItemWrapper h   to the  h and  m file where you want to use keychain   4  To save data to keychain   NSString  emailAddress   self txtEmail text  NSString  password   self txtPasword text    because keychain saves password as NSData object NSData  pwdData    password dataUsingEncoding NSUTF8StringEncoding      Save item self keychainItem     KeychainItemWrapper alloc  initWithIdentifier   YourAppLogin  accessGroup nil    self keychainItem setObject emailAddress forKey    bridge id  kSecAttrAccount     self keychainItem setObject pwdData forKey    bridge id  kSecValueData      5  Read data  probably login screen on loading   viewDidLoad    self keychainItem     KeychainItemWrapper alloc  initWithIdentifier   YourAppLogin  accessGroup nil    self txtEmail text    self keychainItem objectForKey    bridge id  kSecAttrAccount       because label uses NSString and password is NSData object  conversion necessary NSData  pwdData    self keychainItem objectForKey    bridge id  kSecValueData    NSString  password     NSString alloc  initWithData pwdData encoding NSUTF8StringEncoding   self txtPassword text   password    Enjoy

User · Answer

checkout this sample code i tried first the apple s wrapper from the sample code but this is much simpler for me

User · Answer

If you are having an issue retrieving the password using the keychain wrapper  use this code   NSData  pass   keychain objectForKey    bridge id  kSecValueData    NSString  passworddecoded     NSString alloc  initWithData pass                                            encoding NSUTF8StringEncoding

User · Answer

try this one    KeychainItemWrapper  keychainItem     KeychainItemWrapper alloc  initWithIdentifier   YourAppLogin  accessGroup nil    keychainItem setObject   password you are saving  forKey kSecValueData     keychainItem setObject   username you are saving  forKey kSecAttrAccount     may it will help

User · Answer

A very easy solution via Keychains   It s a simple wrapper for the system Keychain  Just add the SSKeychain h  SSKeychain m  SSKeychainQuery h and SSKeychainQuery m files to your project and add the Security framework to your target   To save a password    SSKeychain setPassword   AnyPassword  forService   AnyService  account   AnyUser     To retrieve a password   NSString  password    SSKeychain passwordForService   AnyService  account   AnyUser      Where setPassword is what value you want saved and forService is what variable you want it saved under and account is for what user object the password and any other info is for

User · Answer

For swift you can use this library   https   github com jrendel SwiftKeychainWrapper  It supports all versions of swift

User · Answer

There is a small bug in the above code  by the way Dave it was very helpful your post thank you    In the part where we save the credentials it also needs the following code in order to work properly     self keychainItem setObject   myCredentials  forKey    bridge id  kSecAttrService      most probably is because the second time we try to  re- sign in with the same credentials it finds them already assigned in the keychain items and the app crashes  with the above code it works like a charm

User · Answer

You can simply use NSURLCredential  it will save both username and password in the keychain in just two lines of code   See my detailed answer

[ios] iOS: How to store username/password within an app?

Examples related to ios

Examples related to nsuserdefaults

Examples related to keychain