Q1: Can a native cross-platform mobile app (Android/iOS/Windows) developed in Xamarin call a web service via a secure REST API (https) ?
Q2: If yes, are such calls (when compiled by Xamarin) made 'natively' or made through a webview? In other words, would there be any difference in the app's capability - can the app work as a background service etc as well as a native app?
Note #1: I've searched & found Xamarin documentation for web services: http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/application_fundamentals/web_services/
but there is no specific mention of https. May be the answer is there in the docs, but I'm unable to find/understand.
Note #2: One example of a secure REST-ful service would be Firebase.
You can use Firebase which saves your app data in the cloud
you can find more here and then use Firesharp to access your data in c# code.
Q1: Yes, you can.
Q2: No, no need to use webview. You can use HttpClient class for example or RestSharp library (you can found it in Xamarin components - RestSharp)
Related
How can i make a lotus application an iPhone native apps?
For e.g: eLeave.
The submit or approve action button in the form was created using lotusscript. So how can it work in iOS ? I have no idea how can i extend my lotus application to an iPhone Native Apps. Someone had suggested to use either SOAP or REST via HTTP to communicate between iOS and domino. But i don't even know what can i do with SOAP in my apps.
Pls help.
The suggestions along the lines of SOAP or other HTTP-based access to the data are correct. Since you can't just port a Notes app to the iPhone (for a variety of reasons) or use the Notes Java API classes (since the iPhone doesn't have Java), some form of HTTP access is your best bet. Either traditional Domino web access via forms or XPages are most likely the best way to go, since then you can write your UI in Designer. If you don't want to or can't do that for whatever reason, you're on the hook for writing the UI for your iOS app separately and then connecting to Domino via Web Services or REST functionality.
SOAP Web Services are probably what you want. They have the advantage of being supported directly in Designer - you can create a Web Service Provider in LotusScript or Java in much the same way you would write an Agent or Script Library. You would have to write methods to access and update the data you want, but it would also mean you have full control over what happens. You could re-implement your form-submission code as a web service call that takes the changed data as parameters and then does whatever manipulation you want and creates/saves the document.
It does depend on the version of Lotus/Domino you are running. This could be a start XPages Mobile Controls I am not sure about the "native"here. This is XPages, web based.
Based on your comment, I know of one native application TSAzr. This application uses XPages as web-services on the domino server. A bit more info can be found here dominoGuru
Your follow-up suggests that a mobile-optimised web application will not cut it, and that you want a native application. This means writing a new iOS application, end of story. There are different ways to go about this of course—e.g. you could build a web app and then wrapper it using something like Appcelerator Titanium, or PhoneGap—but ultimately, you need to write something.
As #Jesse Gallagher has already stated, Notes applications can't be ported directly to an iOS device. Apart from anything else, a Lotus Notes client application is a proprietary data store (NSF) sitting within a C and C++-based client built and compiled for the relevant underlying platform (Win or OS X). There is no direct analogue for iOS other than re-coding your app (of course, you could re-use the existing Lotusscript business logic via web service calls, as detailed in earlier answers).
Does it matter much what your website is programmed in (PHP/.NET/ROR etc) with regards to having an iPhone or Android app interact with it?
No, it doesn't matter and if you are trying to build a mobile browser based app, then it won't matter. But if that website provides API , then you can create your app however you want.
If you are making use of service calls, you need to bother about the service request/response formats (xml/json...) and its parsing methods... you need not to worry about the language used to implement those services.
No, it does not matter at all.
I'd like to build a simple native iPhone app with tools traditionally used for web apps.
I would prefer to use something like jQTouch and Rails, but I want it to work offline (not require an internet connection or a server).
Is there a framework that enables simple creation of native iOS aps by encapsulating a lightweight web server and a server-side app framework (Rails or something simpler and more lightweight that can run on a phone), thus allowing you to write the client side code in HTML+JavaScript ?
If there is not such a thing, is there a way to create an app (with HTML+JS) that basically only has a client-side component with persistent data storage?
Thanks.
Have you tried Phonegap?
www.phonegap.com
You write your app in HTML/CSS/JavaScript.
You access the phones APIs through JavaScript - boom!
Also; Appcelerator Titanium would be an option: http://www.appcelerator.com/
-IMO Titanium is more powerful, and offers a more native look.
Why would you want to run a webserver off of the iPhone?
Is it so that you could send back data to the mothership?
Yes, you can included a lightweight http server running in another thread inside your iPhone app, and have your UIWebView connect to it. But unless you are going to do a fancier web server that generates dynamic content, it might be easy to just download your HTML/CSS/Javascript content to a local directory, and then point any URLs to those local files when offline.
I'm trying to get secure web service connectivity on the iPhone over https via SOAP. Currently have http working with NSMutableURLRequest but it doesn't appear to support https. Any ideas what to use to get the secure web service access and processing I'm after?
Any help appreciated // :)
Use gSOAP. It's a C/C++ library providing fast and secure access to web services; you can even develop your own. Even though it's not natively supporting Objective C, it's still IMHO the best open source web services library. Additional information and download can be found here
I am new to wordpress and I want to create an interface for being able to access my database hosted on wordpress in my mobile applications - particularly iPhone and Android.
As these do not directly access SQL databases and would need routines on the server-side for being able to do so, what would be the best way for me to go about writing these routines/web-service calls?
Are there any wordpress plugins available for this? If not, what language should I use - php or something else?
I need some lead.
Perhaps you do not need to access the database directly?
Wordpress supports the XML-RPC standard interface so applications can communicate with WP across the internet, without needing access to WP's database. http://codex.wordpress.org/XML-RPC_Support
If you choose to implement your apps' using XML-RPC, all your communication will be reduced to simple HTTP calls.
To get started I suggest checking out the source code of Wordpress' own iPhone application, which utilizes XML-RPC http://iphone.wordpress.org/
Also, note that Wordpress has published an extension to the XML-RPC API that includes WP specific functions: http://codex.wordpress.org/XML-RPC_wp
I would suggest creating a webapp (iPhone style) for the phone application and calling everything with AJAX to a PHP (Due to Wordpress running PHP) backend to validate and execute the queries. iPhone webapps dev link I haven't found any solid tutorial/resource for developing BlackBerry webapps (Please post back if you find one)
Instead of creating a new app, or trying to port the database, check out WP Touch, which is a Wordpress plugin/theme which will turn your wordpress install into an iPhone friendly site on iPhones.