Getting a device unique identifier in iOS

Question

I'm looking for a way to get any piece of data that can identify unambiguously a particular device. I'm developing an app that needs to be backwards-compatible with iOS 5+. I've read in the documentation that UIDevice's uniqueIdentifier is deprecated since iOS 5, and UUID is only available from iOS 6. What unique info could I provide from my app?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Generate a GUID yourself when the app is first launched and save it. There are many options for how you generate the GUID.

Answer 2

According to Apple guidelines you should use advertisingIdentifier on iOS 6. Problem that in iOS 5 it's not working, but you can use my code to get it for all iOS versions.

- (NSString *) advertisingIdentifier
{
    if (!NSClassFromString(@"ASIdentifierManager")) {
        SEL selector = NSSelectorFromString(@"uniqueIdentifier");
        if ([[UIDevice currentDevice] respondsToSelector:selector]) {
            return [[UIDevice currentDevice] performSelector:selector];
        }
    }
    return [[[ASIdentifierManager sharedManager] advertisingIdentifier] UUIDString];
}