I need to set up a server so that files can be uploaded from an iOS app. I don't know how best to proceed. I thought about FTP but not sure if there is a better option.
any ideas appreciated
GC
Also I must add that I will be building the iOS app so can use server APIs in my code.
It's not ideal to set up a blind File/FTP server and hardcode the details into your app because all it takes is one person to intercept the login details and they have access to your server where they can upload (and potentially execute) bad things.
A possible idea could be to set up an API frontend on your server in a language of your choice (PHP, Ruby, Python or similar) where you can 'POST' images to the server. With the API frontend, you can also do validation to ensure that only valid images are being uploaded and all nefarious stuff is thrown away. Then, in your iOS app, you can set up code to interact with your API frontend and send the actual images which will then be stored on your server.
This is a fairly conceptual idea rather than an absolute implementation idea. It does require some thinking/reading and more setup/coding on the server side.
Edit: Just to add, if you only want a central location to store/get your images without controlling it on a per user basis then you may want to look into Amazon S3 as a File Server.
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I would like to use some publicly available data from a government website as a source of data in an iOS app. But I am not sure what is the best / most polite / scalable way have a large number of users request data from this website with the least impact on their servers and best reliability for me.
It is 1-50kb of static XML with a fixed URL scheme
It updates with a new XML once a day
New users would need to download past data
It has a Last-Modified header but no caching headers
It does not use compression or a CDN
It's a government website, so if someone even replies to my email I doubt they are going to change how they host it for me...
I'm thinking I could run a script on a server to download this file once a day and re-host for my app however my heart desires. But I don't currently run a server which I could use for this and it seems like a lot just for this. My knowledge of web development is not great, so am I perhaps missing something obvious and I just don't know what search terms I should be using to find the answer.
Can I point a CDN at this static data somehow and use that?
Is there something in CloudKit I could use?
Should I run a script on AWS somehow to do the rehosting without needing a full server?
Should I just not worry about it and access the data directly??
You can use the AWS S3 service (Simple Storage Service).
The flow is somewhat like this:
If the file doesn't exist on S3 yet, or, if the creation date of the file on S3 is yesterday, the iOS app downloads the XML from the gov site and stores it in S3.
If the file exists on S3 and is up to date, download it from S3.
After that, the data can be presented by the app without overloading to the site.
I think the best way for you is to create an intermediary database where you can store your data in a secure manner.
Create a pipeline that does some data transformation and store in you newly created database.
Create an api with pagination and you desired filters
Also make sure you are not violating any data policies in the process.
I hope this helps.
I am trying to code an IOS application and already have an ec2 server designated for the app. I want to know how the app could send image data to the server. The ec2 server would receive incoming image data continuously from all the users that use the app. The server would then process the data. It would be similar to what applications such as Instagram do but, of course not at such a large scale.
I am a beginner at client-server communication and want to know how to implement this into my app. I also do not use stack overflow too frequently, so please tell me if I am doing something wrong if you need more information.
To be more specific, a user would post an image in the app. I currently have already set up an ec2 server to possibly receive that image. I want all of the images that users post to be delivered, processed, then stored in the ec2 server. Is there some way to handle the actual delivery of data. The question is a little broad because I want to know where to look. Would I have to write a script that is constantly running in the background and receiving data at some port? Is there another service I could use that handles this?
Um, briefly, you'll have issues with running on an EC2 if you have many users sending images at the same time.
Look into setting up API Gateway <-> Lambda <-> DynamoDB or S3 on AWS. Then your client can POST images/data to your gateway with a HTTP request.
First you must decide if your data is streaming (continuously pushed from server) or stored (pulled from the server as needed). The Instagram example you provided suggest that you have no need for real-time streaming data.
A streaming solution is more complicated and may typically require a technology like web sockets (or AWS IoT) to accomplish. A storage solution will be much simpler.
For storing you have the choice between creating and managing server(s) using a platform like EC2 (you'll need more than one server to scale to many users), or using managed 'serverless' technology like Lamba where you only need provide the code. The tradeoff is for this convenience is usually price.
For image storage, a typical pattern is creating database records that contain an S3 URL for the underlying image (as well as any metadata). You can create this database record and upload your file using whatever server technology you choose; Lambda may require an API Gateway server but remember that the AWS SDK can invoke Lambda functions directly.
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 doing some research on a new project we want to work on, but before we actually take on the project I have some concerns.
This project involves storing a lot of (text) data somewhere on a server, you can think about it like Instagram (but without photos).
So you can follow people, view profiles, list of activity ...
The question is, how do these apps send all this data securely to a server?
And what kind of server do they use? Something like Amazon AWS?
They are sent over https which is built into the NSURLConnection class. You can have a server (I use linux but you can use anything) have a self signed ssl certificate and your App code can give an exception to that particular URL for self signed certificates if you are wanting to save money. It is better practice and more secure to have a signed certificate though.
As far as storing it, most don't actually store it encrypted. It is sent to the server running a web service encrypted and then is stored in the database / file system unencrypted. The reason for this is there is a lot of processing power required to compress things and the extra over head of storing encrypted things as well as making it harder to search and index depending on how you do it.
Amazon AWS would work although I run my own server at home. It's quite easy to set up.