With CloudKit, you can focus on your client-side app development and let iCloud eliminate the need to write server-side application logic. CloudKit provides you with Authentication, private and public database, structured and asset storage services — all for free with very high limits.
You cannot upload any code to run on Apple's servers?
I've heard it being compared to Google App Engine and other cloud computing platforms, but without the ability to run your own code, isn't the whole thing pretty limited and not really comparable?
For example, if I want to build a news app which periodically pushes stories on topics that the user is interested, then this can't be done just using CloudKit because I would need scheduled jobs and data processing on the server.
Any thoughts?
Server-side
As you said CloudKit doesn't allow server-side code.
But there are possibilities.
Crons
You don't want to connect to the iCloud Dashboard everyday in order to perform the push by adding a record. One solution here is to code an app on a mac server (I guess mac mini as server will become more popular with CloudKit) that add a new Daily CKRecord every day.
Subscriptions
Subscriptions concept is that the client registers for specific updates. You can create a record type called Daily for instance and make users register to it. You should check the Apple documentation and WWDC14 videos (even if Subscriptions are not detailed, it's a good start point).
The good thing is push notifications are linked with the subscription concept. So basically you say: Send my a notification for each new CKRecord of type Daily added.
BaaS party
What is the point for using CloudKit (vs Parse and other?)
Price: CloudKit has a really nice pricing
Ready to go: 2 clicks inside XCode and you are ready to go
User consistency: you get free user login for all his devices through their iCloud account. With a very good privacy system. And you can get relationships with a smart system.
But:
You are stick on Apple platform. We don't even know if we could export the data..
Only data-centered for now (no server-side code)
The CloudKit dashboard is too limited
The future
CloudKit is still pretty new. At the WWDC some guys behind it made me understand that they are still heavily working on it. My bets are they are working on 2 important points :
Server side code execution through remote scheduled tasks
CloudKit for Analytics (Visualization side)
Edit: Apple guys are fully aware and concerned about the lack of web access for the data. It means that one day it may be accessible from other platforms. I read in a comment that Apple probably would have bought Parse if CloudKit wasn't better, AFAIK they tried to buy Parse (skills buy it's said, but we don't really know).
Update WWDC15
CloudKit is now available in JS and some dashboard are available now. Wait and see.
Update February 2016
CloudKit Now Supports Server-to-Server Web Service Requests
Web Services Reference
In some cases, we do not need server-side logic, and just storing static data can cover all the usage scenario.
In this case, it would be very helpful if there's a free accessible storage that you can store something. CloudKit provides such stuffs rather then full service platform.
Yes it is limited. Anyway can be useful for some people. For example, your case actually can be supported CloudKit. Though CloudKit is just a static storage, it support subscription. Which monitors a set of conditions and pushes the event notification to client. It's fortunate that the only background job feature supported by CloudKit is just what you need.
Anyway, if you need more, then you might need to consider full fledged servers. Usually simple web services with simple server-side code execution support are also limited.
You cannot upload any code to run on Apple's servers?
You can and you can't. You can't upload code / SOAP based web services to the server, instead of it you can upload / store observers on the server, called subscription.
whole thing pretty limited and not really comparable?
I would say in CloudKit and in MBaas client communicates with server though a more narrower more robust interface: you can not upload exotic web service to do XML parsing, database manipulations and based on it trigger push notifications, but RestFull architecture allows you to perform the 4 basic operation on the data store, and with subscription client can get notified about INSERT / UPDATE / DELETE operations performed on tables.
I think MBaas is just the next step in evolution of server - client architecture. First it seems it is limiting, but you can do all as in SOAP based web services world. Development is extremely fast / scalable / comfortable to use and easier to control things like permissions / setup, maintain server, security needs almost no effort.
Believe it or not, you can actually get REALLY far with this approach.
I've not used CloudKit, but I can describe for you my application stack:
AngularJS (or your favorite client side HTML rendering framework): A single page will host a series of templates/controllers selected by the router and driven by users changing the anchor to select which page they're on.
Firebase.io (or your favorite cloud storage): Any dynamic data goes into the cloud document store. The controller needs to load the data and render the template on the client, and when the data changes, send the data back. This also provides the authentication and authorization as well, since you can limit access to the data.
Now you need a place to serve the HTML/CSS/JS/images... which requires no 'server side code execution', just a web server where you can put the assets.
Using this technique you could store all the user's topics in the database for that user, and when the page loads, go and aggregate all the sources for those topics (also stored in the database) completely client side. There's nothing in your example application which actually requires server side execution that I can see, so long as you have cloud storage which will provide you with authentication and authorization services, and a 'dumb' web server for serving up static assets.
CloudKit isn't a full-fledged web hosting service. Instead, it's an SDK for iCloud. You shouldn't be putting a web site up there, just storing user data that you may want to use in multiple applications or platforms.
iCloud APIs enable your apps to store app data in iCloud, keeping your apps up to date automatically. Use iCloud to give your users a consistent and seamless experience across iCloud-enabled devices.
Related
I'm developing a Mac app that uses CloudKit as its back-end. Some of my users are requesting the ability to ingest and extract data via an automation/integration service such as Zapier. For this, I need to introduce a web API.
I am planning to use CloudKit Web Services to access the app's data. This data is user-specific and hence, resides in a private database. As a result, CloudKit requires user authentication as described here.
Essentially the user needs to be redirected to an Apple-hosted authentication page. After successful authentication, an authentication token is provided that can be used for data operations. Similar to how OAuth2 works, but different enough to not work with Zapier's (or probably any other similar services) supported authentication schemes.
Who has done something similar? What are my options? I want to keep things as simple as possible and make my web API's implementation as thin as possible.
Thanks.
Niels
This is definitely doable and you are on-track with your thinking. Here's how I envision it working:
You could do all of this with a front-end web app (no server-side app needed). I personally prefer Vue.js but you probably have something in mind already.
Your app will need to authenticate the user to CloudKit using the flow you mentioned. I highly recommend you use the Web Services API and not try to wrestle Apple's neglected CloudKit JS API. For this, you are going to need to generate an API token in the CloudKit Dashboard.
You app would then prompt the user to authenticate to Zapier.
You should now have user credentials for both CloudKit and Zapier in place in the user's browser cache (you can save, for example, the CloudKit token to sessionStorage and likewise with Zapier).
Make API calls to Zapier, pull down the data, and then save it to CloudKit all within your JS app. It's all API transactions at this point. I'm a fan of Axios for making the HTTP requests.
If you are downloading files, transacting huge amounts of data, or doing processor-intensive stuff, you might consider using a server for that work. But if you just need a place to pull and push reasonable chunks of data, I see no reason why you can't do it all in a front-end app.
Alternatively, if you don't want a web app at all, and want to only have the user work in the Mac app, that can be done, too. Just make API calls directly to Zapier from within your Cocoa app. Whether or not this is feasible depends some on how you want it to work.
If you have more specific questions or need help with any of the implementation details, feel free to add a follow-up comment or ask a new question.
Good luck!
I think the other answer is mostly correct. I don't know much about CloudKit, but we can talk through what you'd need for it to work.
Let's say you had a simple iOS app that stored contacts. On the iOS side, Apple presumably abstracts the upload and download operations.
If you wanted to make a web viewer for synced contacts using CloudKit, you'd need an endpoint to fetch all rows belonging to the authenticated user (each of which would have a UUID, name, and a phone number). I believe that's possible with CloudKit code Apple provides (but let me know if I'm off base).
Now, we want to integrate with Zapier. Say, a "New Contact" trigger. You make some sort of authenticated HTTP request from Zapier to Apple on behalf of an authenticated user. It gives back a list of contacts and Zapier can trigger on the ones it hasn't seen before. To do that, Zapier needs some sort of user token.
That's where the little front-end page the other answerer mentioned comes into play. If you've got a web page that can surface a user's token to them, they can paste it into Zapier and all of the above becomes possible. I'm not sure what the lifespan of the token is, but hopefully it can be automatically refreshed as needed (rather than the user needing to take any manual action).
I'm not sure if what I've described is possible, but do let me know if it is. It would be huge if it were possible to integrate Zapier and the iOS ecosystem!
Edit to respond to comments:
Zapier won't be able to interact with CloudKit in a way sufficient for me (some minor business logic is needed)
I'm not sure what that entails for you, but it's common to put logic in the Zapier integration to structure data in a way Zapier expects. There's a full Node.js execution environment, so the sky's the limit here.
I don't think Zapier can authenticate against CloudKit as it uses a non-standard authentication scheme
Once you've got a user's token (described above, which is unusual), you will almost certainly be able to use it in requests to cloudkit. Zapier provides a "custom" authentication scheme which lets you do basically anything you want. So unless Apple uses something that fetch can't handle (unlikely), it should be fine (once you get the token).
I would like to push data directly from my app into Zapier and have it done whatever magic the user has configured
This is also probably possible. Zapier ingests data in two ways:
polling, where Zapier frequently makes a web request, store the IDs of items we've seen before, and act on the new ones. You can read more about that here. Assuming you can work your business logic into the integration, this is doesn't require an external server besides Apple's
webhooks, where Zapier registers a subscription with you and you send new data, on demand, to that address. This would probably require a webserver on your end to handle. It's optional though - you can do polling instead.
Hopefully this cleared it up a bit. Feel free to reach out to partners#zapier.com and reference this question to talk more about it.
CloudKit JS looks interesting. Yes, I know all about Parse, but was wondering if we can build a simple CMS on my server that can use the new CloudKit JS features: Authenticate, Add, Delete, etc. Or can this only run as a CMS in an App environment (like on an iPad)? AKA, the Public Container?
Basically what I'm trying to do is have my clients populate the App with data using CloudKit JS (using a simple web form front end), and not have to resort to using a php/mysql setup?
Question: Can CloudKit function now as my CMS? Finding zero examples, LOVE to learn!
https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/DataManagement/Conceptual/CloutKitWebServicesReference/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40015240
If you have a CloudKit app, you can use CloudKit web services to provide a web interface for users to access the same data as your app. You must have the schema for your databases already created to use CloudKit web services. CloudKit web services provides an HTTP interface to fetch, create, update, and delete records, zones, and subscriptions. You also have access to discoverable users and contacts
As far as I understand, this is exactly the type of functionality that the CloudKit Web Services are meant for. As long as you have an application published in either the Mac or iOS App Store you can have a web presence, for instance in the form of a CMS.
Is there a reason why you think this is not possible or somehow prohibited? There is nothing preventing you from doing this in the Terms and Conditions as far as I can tell.
The CloudKit catalog sample project is a great way to get started:
https://cdn.apple-cloudkit.com/cloudkit-catalog/
Ok this a great talk at WWDC 2015, explain lots: CloudKit JS and Web Services
CloudKit.js is the new library that provides web access to your app data stored in iCloud. Explore the new web service APIs and learn how to extend your iOS or OS X apps to the web using CloudKit.
https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=710
I a thinking of creating an iPhone/iOS app that would include a feature where one user could create a list of words and then save them to their account on a server. Also (and this is very important), the user could share their list with other users by giving them permission.
So my question is, how can I go about creating such a server? For right now, I have a home computer (running Windows XP that just stores data for my music system) which I can use to host the server. I am also open to the use of other online storage services like Google Drive or Dropbox (I can't remember if Amazon does anything like that). However (and I know this may complicate things a bit), but at least for now, I want/need to stick with free services/options.
Just to recap, the key features that I am looking for are:
create users/accounts (on the server)
eventually I may [try] to incorporate the use of other services to log users in like with their email account, OpenId, etc.
the ability to access (log in to) the server (with credentials) from my app
the ability to send/receive data between the server and my app
the ability to share data between users
I know this is a lot to ask for, but if anyone has any suggestions or can get me going in the right direction, it would be much appreciated.
The basic setup would be as follows:
Backend: Database (MySQL), Web server (Apache), with server side scripting (PHP).
Client: iOS device with developed app.
Communication: use HTTP client/server model, communicating with something like JSON.
This is much the same setup as a web server, but instead of serving html/css/javascript etc the results will be JSON.
As far as implementing specifics such as login in, and sharing data between users, this is purely dependent on your implementation. This is not trivial, and not something that can be easily stated in a single post.
Hope this helps.
You could build your own webservice in PHP, Ruby or Python. If you do so I would recommend building a RESTful webservice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer) and then use RestKit (http://restkit.org/) to handle the data in the iOS app. Especially RestKit's CoreData integration is nice in my opinion.
Another solution would be using a service like Parse (https://parse.com/products/data). The first million or so requests per month are free but after that it could get pricy. I personally have not tried it so I couldn't tell you if it is any good.
I am new to iOS app development and am interested in developing an app that needs to utilize existing technologies to sync app specific data across multiple i-devices (iPhone, iPad, Touch, etc.). As an example, the app can be installed on multiple devices. On one device, the user will initially create an account. Then in subsequent logins, the user may create a task list, and each task item may possibly include a captured photo image. On the user's second i-device, as he logs in, he would be able to see and access the list and images (locally). Can someone explain to me what technologies I can leverage on to implement such an app?
Specifically:
How do I set up and manage the user accounts? Do I Need a dedicated server and sql database set up for my entire user base? And what programming/scripting languages do I need to learn?
How about the mechanism of pushing and pulling app data from one device to another? Do I need some kind of cloud technologies (SaaS?) to handle the storage and transferring of the data?
Any specific open source or commercial products I can leverage on?
Thanks in advance.
Kenny
I personally have not have had a situation like this, but here is what I would recommend.
You will need to have a server set up with database software.
You will need to write an api for yourself based on HTTP POST (REST) or maybe you could write a SOAP service.
I would HIGHLY recommend purchasing an SSL cert. for your server that way you can send the username and password in your request and it will be encrypted automatically.
For the api, you have a whole selection of languages and databases at your disposal. I am personally biased towards asp net with an MSSQL server.
with your api you will need to write methods to authenticate the user, and then save and send your data.
In your app you will simply send web requests to the server (ASIHttpRequest maybe?) and you can receive JSON responses back, which you can then deserialize into workable objects and vice versa.
if you do use asp net, you can use the newtonsoft JSON library to convert your objects for sending and convert received objects.
I dont remember the name, but there also is a JSON library for obj-c that is usable on iPhone.
Use a SQL server and host a database of logins and passwords.
Then, from each device, create a connection to the server, and download the login information for the account.
Also, not to be rude but: Google it.
I currently develop an iOS app for a local business directory, and I use SQLite. This sadly means I must do several hours of data entry when new businesses are added and push the updated DB out, because the desktop site uses the Joomla CMS.
Obviously companies that provide directory services don't have to worry about such things. How do they do it? Core Data accompanied by a screen scraper?
PS. I apologise if this question is inappropriate to be asked on StackOverflow, I didn't know where else to ask.
Generally these companies have a client/server architecture where the data lives on a centralised server and the mobile apps pull the data through an exposed API over the internet.
To replicate this yourself, you would have a server with all the data and expose it through an API/web service (so you'd need to think about authentication and security) which your mobile app pulls from when it needs to update the database or just have the query sent to the web service and return the appropriate results so the database does not live on the iOS device itself. The downside to the first approach (updating the DB) is you'd need to wait for the DB to fully update before the user could use the application and the downside to the second approach is to make queries, the client would need an active internet connection.
The first thing you'd want to look at is if/how you can expose the data stored in the Joomla CMS through an API (XML/JSON?)