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).

Answer 1

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!

Answer 2

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.