HTTPS certificate expiry

[anshul.bisht]

Hello support,

I have 2 doubts regarding SSL certificate listed below -

1. Is there anyway we can monitor certificate expiry?
   What I meant is that I want to receive a notification email before 1 week or some N days prior
   to my certificate expiry. I know the cloudflare automatically renews certificate.

2. What time does the cloudflare replaces the old certificate with a new one?
   Is it exactly the same time at which the old certificate expires or some N days before
   expiration.

I have a mobile app that uses HTTPS api calls for security reasons. That app uses the SSL certificate of my APIs that are hosted on cloudflare system. Some days back, the APIs SSL certificate expired and hence the existing customers of my app were not able to use it due to no response from the apis due to certificate expiry. I then downloaded the new certificate from the browser by accessing APIs using the url and then replaced with the old certificate. After this, I rolled out the new builds on Google and Apple store.

Hope you understand the doubts. I need help urgently. Thank you.

[matteo]

@anshul.bisht

Is there anyway we can monitor certificate expiry?

This can be done via external services, or you can enable Certificate Transparency Monitoring and you’ll get an e-mail when a certificate has been issued for your domain. It’s free (by some providers) and available from multiple providers, including Cloudflare in the Dashboard.

@anshul.bisht

What time does the cloudflare replaces the old certificate with a new one?

Usually some time prior to that, to account for any issues, in case it needs to be retried. Once the new one is issued it replaces the old.

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What I don’t get is why you need to have the SSL certificate in the app’s code. it isn’t needed.

[anshul.bisht]

@matteo Thanks for the swift response.

I got the answers of my doubts.
I have made a mobile application that uses GitHub - nativescript-community/https: Secure HTTP client with SSL pinning for Nativescript - iOS/Android for secure API calls. It demands the presence of certificate file of the domain.
For eg, if my APIs are accessible from domain https://abc.com/v1/ then I need the SSL certificate for domain abc.com.

That is why I asked about the time when the Cloudflare replaces the old certificate with a new one.