SSL Certificate confusion - ios

Question

I am clearly missing the Aha! moment because I have been doing research on using CA or Self signed Certificates and such for gaining access to a secure URL https and I am still having trouble fully understanding it, I am mostly just blundering about with other people code and solutions to try and get mine working, i am clearly lacking a fundamental understanding so hopefully the denizens of the site can help.
Essentially, i have an app that communicates, with a https server using a self signed certificate.
What I believe to be the certificate and key needed to access the server are both stored in a p12 stored in the root bundle of the app. I then add this p12 to the phones or apps keychain through this code I found on the internet
NSString *p12Path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:p12Name ofType:#"p12"];
NSData *p12Data = [[NSData alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:p12Path];
NSError *error = nil;
NSData *data = [[SFHFKeychainUtils getPasswordForUsername:[[UIDevice currentDevice]name] andServiceName:serviceName error:&error] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
[self transform:data];
NSString *pass = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:data encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
CFStringRef password = (__bridge CFStringRef)pass;
const void *keys[] = { kSecImportExportPassphrase };
const void *values[] = { password };
CFDictionaryRef optionsDictionary = CFDictionaryCreate(NULL, keys, values, 1, NULL, NULL);
CFArrayRef p12Items;
OSStatus result = SecPKCS12Import((__bridge CFDataRef)p12Data, optionsDictionary,&p12Items);
if(result == noErr)
{
CFDictionaryRef identityDict = CFArrayGetValueAtIndex(p12Items, 0);
SecIdentityRef identityApp =(SecIdentityRef)CFDictionaryGetValue(identityDict,kSecImportItemIdentity);
SecCertificateRef certRef;
SecIdentityCopyCertificate(identityApp,&certRef);
SecCertificateRef certArray[1] = { certRef };
CFArrayRef myCerts = CFArrayCreate(NULL, (void *)certArray, 1, NULL);
CFRelease(certRef);
NSURLCredential *credential = [NSURLCredential credentialWithIdentity:identityApp certificates:(__bridge NSArray *)myCerts persistence:NSURLCredentialPersistencePermanent];
CFRelease(myCerts);
[[RKObjectManager sharedManager].HTTPClient setDefaultCredential:credential];
}
And, well this seems to work, But i have to have this enabled
_httpClient = [RKObjectManager sharedManager].HTTPClient;
[_httpClient setAllowsInvalidSSLCertificate:YES];
Otherwise it does not connect, Now I have seen various posts saying, you need to have this set to yes to allow self signed certs, but at the same time i have seen other posts saying that it should only be for development as otherwise this makes using https entirely redundant. And obviously redundant security is bad so i set it to no...and it does not connect.
So Really does anyone have any links or could spare some time themselves filling up the gaps in my knowledge on how this stuff works? it would be much appreciated and would save me getting grief from the boss.

Answer 1

This needs to be handled by AFNetworking and is called 'SSL Pinning'. Check the docs here for details on how to enable the feature and supply your certificate. There is also useful information here.