If I wanted to have a user forum in my app would this be a way to set it up?
MySQL DB for the backend
PHP page for the web service
NSURLConnection to talk and receive from the web service
it would be fairly simple, plain text.
I'm sure there's a gazillion ways to set this up but this is the rout I was thinking.
You're not going to have a user forum in your app, you're going to access a user forum from your app. So any way you want to set up the forum on your server, including the one you suggest, will work fine provided there's a way to connect to it from iOS.
You can use NSURLConnection to access the forum, of course, but that class just manages the actual connection. You might find it easier to use a UIWebView as a mini-browser in your app, and simply point the web view at the appropriate URL.
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I've used React Native for about 2 months now and I've learned a lot already. Now I wanna know how to connect my app to a SQL database. I want to be able to log in, register and chat. I've already built the log in, register and chat screen but I just need one function that can communicate online with a database, I guess. This must be possible... If so, how? A quick answer would be highly appreciated!
Update: This question was asked simply because I didn't recognize some programming terms back then... If you are asking yourself the same thing, search for "RESTful API" and then your desired programming language.
Update
This question was initially asked bescause of my lack of knowledge with backend and general APIs (Look at the title, it's obvious). After one year plus (now), I'm selling my own services and products to other corporations, professionally.
What you're wanting is a web api. Essentially, you will build a web application that you can access over http. You will most likely want to use RESTful web calls. Your web application will then take those REST requests, access your database, operate on your data and return a data response (JSON or XML). Then your iOS app would receive that JSON response and do whatever it needs to with it.
You can build a REST API out of pretty much any server side language, so pick one you like or feel comfortable with and start there.
I am developing an iOS application (to be deployed on the App Store) that requires content updates on a weekly basis.
I understand that the best way to achieve this would be to use a server, where the app would query for new data and download responses in JSON. However I am not knowledgeable when it comes to HTML, PHP or MySQL and therefore am endeavoring to find an alternative.
Here's an idea: using Dropbox to substitute for a server backend. My app connects to one central Dropbox account, checks for new files, and downloads them if present.
Is this idea feasible? If not, are there any alternatives?
Dropbox cannot be a dependable substitute for your server/backend for following reasons:
Dropbox uses OAuth for authentication, which needs user interaction. You do not want your app users to go through Dropbox authentication with your 'common' credentials.
Users who have a Dropbox account or the app installed, will most likely use their own credentials to login which completely breaks your flow.
Drobox, although a good way of sharing and syncing files is not meant for more meaningful data like web services etc or user/database interaction etc. Just syncing JSON file may suffice your app's needs for now but from a long term perspective you want a proper back end.
As suggested in the comment by #tkanzakic you can use one of the substitution services if you don't want to get too technical on the backend.
I am pretty late to the party, but this is possible and not necessarily a stupid idea (though this depends on what you need). You might want to have a look at remote storage for example, which allows you to use Dropbox among other providers as backend.
For sure, you can use the Dropbox Sync API to achieve this (https://www.dropbox.com/developers/sync).
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'm currently building a mobile application (iOS at first), which needs a backend web service to communicate with.
Since this service will be exposing data that I only want to be accessed by my mobile clients, I would like to restrict the access to the service.
However I'm in a bit of a doubt as to how this should be implemented. Since my app doesn't require authentication, I can't just authenticate against the service with these credentials. Somehow I need to be able to identify if the request is coming from a trusted client (i.e. my app), and this of course leads to the thought that one could just use certificates. But couldn't this certificate just be extracted from the app and hence misused?
Currently my app is based on iOS, but later on android and WP will come as well.
The web service I'm expecting to develop in nodejs, though this is not a final decision - it will however be a RESTful service.
Any advice on best practice is appreciated!
Simple answer: You cannot prevent just anybody from acecssing your web site from a non-mobile client. You can, however, make it harder.
Easy:
Send a nonstandard HTTP header
Set some unique query parameter
Send an interesting (or subtly non-interesting) User Agent string
(you can probably think of a few more)
Difficult:
Implement a challenge/response protocol to identify your client
(Ab)use HTTP as a transport for your own encrypted content
(you can probably think of a few more)
Of course anybody could extract the data, decompile your code, replay your HTTP requests, and whatnot. But at some point, being able to access a free Web application wouldn't be worth the effort that'd be required to reverse-engineer your app.
There's a more basic question here, however. What would be the harm of accessing your site with some other client? You haven't said; and without that information it's basically impossible to recommend an appropriate solution.
I'm developing an iPhone game, and thanks to some backers, I got the funding for finishing it.
I wanted to give rewards to those backers with a "passcode"; they will simply enter the passcode and get rewards in the game.
Of course, any one of them would be able to distribute that passcode to the public...and that's a problem.
What is the best way to achieve something like this? Some kind of one-use password?
My first idea was to connect to a remote MySQL server from my game and check that password if it has been used before etc. But I was told that I shouldn't do that directly, that I need some kind of intermediate platform for it. So for the sake of simplicity, what are your ideas?
You could build some web services yourself to interact with your app. Alternatively you could choose a service that claims to do this for you - e.g parse.com. Have a look at the 'user management' section of the homepage of that site. I don't know how stable Parse is but it does look promising for what you want to do, if you don't want to spend a lot of time. There must be some alternatives out there as well.
Not certain but i dont think there is an MySQL driver handy for this architecture, so writing directly to a server on port 3306 is out of the question (as well as being a huge security risk for your server). I would probably write some simple rest API (in PHP), server side, and do a REST call to the server from the iOS app, a simple request-response over http(s). The response could probably be an xml file (aka a plist) that you could store in the Documents directory - your cue moving forward that the device has a privileged access to your goodies. The server would interface the MySQL to 'consume' the passphrase. PHP can be setup to be relatively safe (from SQL injections, and other 'bad' things).
These two tutorials by Ray Wenderlich demonstrate almost exactly what you want to do. Set up a MySQL database with a Php interface.
Part one:
http://www.raywenderlich.com/2941/how-to-write-a-simple-phpmysql-web-service-for-an-ios-app
Part two:
http://www.raywenderlich.com/2965/how-to-write-an-ios-app-that-uses-a-web-service