Did Apple change the .mobileprovision file format, and how can I view the current format?

Question

I\'m finding many articles on the web where it is implied that you can view the .mobileprovision file contents in a text editor. For example, this Urban Airship post:

Answer 1

Provisioning Profiles are encoded. To decode them and examine the XML you can use this via command line:

security cms -D -i #{@profilePath}

where #{@profilePath} is the filepath to your .mobileprovision file.

A fuller Ruby example is:

require 'plist'
profile = `security cms -D -i #{@profilePath}`
xml = Plist::parse_xml(profile)
appID = xml['Entitlements']['application-identifier']