previously i call the service from the same class when and where i need the data. is it a good approach to do it, let me know the best option to integrate web-services. Also using ASIHttpRequest framework is come under good coding standards?
yes ,ASIHttpRequest framework is come under good coding standards. there are some features that missing in AFNetwork.You can check below link
What major ASIHTTPRequest features is AFNetworking missing?
Yes, I agree ASIHttpRequest framework is good and most people prefer this but its not maintained so we need to looking for some other option also.I am using AFNetworking instead of ASIHttpRequest and found it is performance wise faster than ASIHttpRequest.It is already use NSSerialization for parsing the JSON string so you need not to worry about JSON parsing.They take care of every thing we required when we are call api like JSON parsing, XML parsing, loader etc.
You can check http://www.absoluteripple.com/1/post/2013/01/using-afnetworking.html
https://github.com/AFNetworking/AFNetworking/wiki/Getting-Started-with-AFNetworking
Related
In my iOS app, I am trying to get and post data from a (RESTful) server. I think for that both RestKit and AFIncrementalStore are good candidates.
However I also need to be able to save data offline and push it to the server when the app is online.
I am trying to understand which is a better framework to use for the application.
Also, from some of the online resources, it seems that using faulting on AFIncrementalStore could potentially cause the thread handling ManagedContext (usually the mainThread) to get stuck while furnishing the network request to get a property. Is it a big deal?
PS: Adding afnetworking tag since afincrementalstore tag is not available
AFIncrementalStore works within Core data, sending back to your Web service. It uses the relatively new API Apple provides called NSIncrementalStore.
RestKit works from outside Core Data, binding HTTP requests to Core Data loosely using the object mapping architecture RK provides.
Here are some pros & cons for both:
New RestKit version (0.2.x) is ligther than the 0.1 version
RestKit now use the really good AFNetworking for all his HTTP request work, just like AFIncrementalStore.
ResKit has A LOT of test coverage
AFIS is really light since it's built on NSIncrementalStore
AFIS give you a bit more flexibility, since you're pretty much on your own
RestKit is pretty huge and can be scary at first
RestKit is a complete solution, but takes time to fully wrap your head around all its concepts
My final recommendation would be to take the time and try both. What I can confirm is you'll need to drop a bit more lines of code using AFIS, since it does not take you by the hand as much as RestKit, so it's really a matter of preference.
Hope this will help you make the right choice!
I am developing application in iPhone, Where i need to download and upload data from webservice. Please advice me which is the best class or Framework to achieve this and also please let me know which is the best xmlparser.
you can use asihttprequest and asihttpresponse for establishing connection use restful api and nxxml parser for parsing the data comes from server
thanks
NSXMLParser is a SAX parser included by default with the iPhone SDK.
TouchXML is an NSXML style DOM XML parser for the iPhone.
If your web service has the ability to return json, I would highly recommend doing so and using http://code.google.com/p/json-framework/. Especially if you have a complex XML document.
As for connecting to the service, it's pretty straightforward - all you need is a method to handle the connections. While there are 'frameworks' out there, it's as simple as creating a method such as "getDataFromService:(nsstring *)param1" and within that method issuing a request.
I think the bigger question you'll need to answer is how to authenticate with the service, if required. If the service uses OAuth, http://code.google.com/p/gtm-oauth/ is a great framework.
If a iphone app needs to communicate with a server, is xml the best route in most cases?
how hard is it to parse xml in obj-c?
It really depends on the type of data you wish to exchange, but XML will at the very least be able to handle any complexity of data structure you require. (If you only want to exchange a minimal amount of information, you might want to consider JSON that said.)
There are quite a few XML parsers available for Objective-C, most of which are discussed on this existing question: Navigating XML from Objective-C
Finally, there's a great blog post on Ray Wenderlich's web site that discusses the various XML parsers with a view to speed/memory footprint which might be important if you're parsing a large amount of data.
Depends on what is beeing transmitted.
That said I use JSON for 90% of my server to app communication. Easy to parse as libraries are readily available.
Nope. Not hard. But when it comes to APIs it seems many prefer JSON.
JSON is easier to work with than XML, regardless of parser used. Lots of server side people will understand JSON quite well because of the need to use it to work with Javascript.
The iPhone JSON parser I'd look at using first is YAJL.
I would either go with XML or JSON ( http://www.json.org/ ).
It's very easy to parse XML on the iPhone. There are quite a few XML parsers out there based on your preference. For a DOM parser you can use TBXML, otherwise Apple's built-in NSXMLParser does the job.
I use JSON, which is a great (and popular) solution for your server as well. Try out SBJSON for a good obj c library:
http://code.google.com/p/json-framework/
we were asked to develop an iphone app like the one in the figure.
The problem is: we have no experience in IOS development.
For the basic part I can handle the learning curve, but i need suggestions, best practices on the UIKit model and controls.
This is a newspaper app.
The accordion control shows/hides content based on categories retrieved by an ASP .NET CMS on which we have no control.
I can suggest to the CMS holder to develop a couple of web services (WCF) but i'm not sure how to interface iOS with MS technology.
Furthermore, i have the idea that simple aspx that returns XML/JSON data will be easier to call, and support, but slightly less secure.
So, suggestions? Tutorials?
If you like to use JSON and a very good HTTP-request-framework I have two links for you. Both sites contain various tutorials on how to use them.
json-framework
ASIHTTPRequest
Concerning the request and delegate stuff: For a start, I would skip the delegate part and use a synchronized HTTP request called in a thread (you'll see what that is on the second website). That makes the response handling a lot easier for the start. But I personally think, that using an asynchronous request is not a must. It's just nicer, if the architecture allows it. In my application, it wasn't realizable without lots of code overhead.
You want to output an XML feed in "plist" format (look it up, its simple theres lots of info on it).
Then you can do:
NSArray *plistContents = [NSArray arrayWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL URLWithString:#"http://theinternet.com/pathToMyPlist.asp"]];
That will get all the output into an array.
Some other resources you may find interesting/useful include NSURLRequest and NSURLConnection. For the latter you will have to learn about delegate methods and such - its complicated, but its incredibly useful information.
We did several applications here using XML parsing like what you're suggesting at the end of your question. If you are concerned about security, you can implement handshaking or other security measures over that.
EDIT: XML parsing done using NSURLConnection to gather the content and NSXMLParser/NSXMLParserDelegate to do the actual parsing.
EDIT2: There is an official sample, called SeismicXML from Apple. It should get you started with iPhone XML parsing and data downloading.
We are going to set up a solution where the iPhone is requesting data from the server. We have the option to decide what kind of solution to put in place and we are not sure about which way to go.
Regarding SOAP I think I have the answer, there are no really stable solution for doing this (I know there are solutions, but I want something stable).
How about REST?
Or is it better to just create our own XML? It's not going to be so complicated reguest/respons-flow.
Thanks in advance!
I've created an open source application for iPhone OS 3.0 that shows how to use REST & SOAP services in iPhone application, using XML (using 8 different iPhone libraries), SOAP, JSON (using SBJSON and TouchJSON), YAML, Protocol Buffers (Google serialization format) and even CSV from a PHP sample app (included in the project).
http://github.com/akosma/iPhoneWebServicesClient
The project is modular enough to support many other formats and libraries in the future.
The following presentation in SlideShare shows my findings in terms of performance, ease of implementation and payload characteristics:
http://www.slideshare.net/akosma/web-services-3439269
Basically I've found, in my tests, that Binary Plists + REST + JSON and XML + the TBXML library are the "best" options (meaning: ease of implementation + speed of deserialization + lowest payload size).
In the Github project there's a "results" folder, with an Excel sheet summarizing the findings (and with all the raw data, too). You can launch the tests yourself, too, in 3G or wifi, and then have the results mailed to yourself for comparison and study.
Hope it helps!
REST is the way to go. There are SOAP solutions, but given that all people end up doing with SOAP can be done with RESTful services anyway, there's simply no need for the overhead (SOAP calls wrap XML for data inside of an XML envelope which must also be parsed).
The thing that makes REST as an approach great is that it makes full use of the HTTP protocol, not just for fetching data but also posting (creating) or deleting things too. HTTP has standard messages defined for problems with all those things, and a decent authentication model to boot.
Since REST is just HTTP calls, you can choose what method of data transfer best meets your needs. You could send/receive XML if you like, though JSON is easier to parse and is smaller to send. Plists are another popular format since you can send richer datatypes across and it's slightly more structured than JSON, although from the server side you generally have to find libraries to create it.
Many people use JSON but beware that it's very finicky about parsing - mess up a character at the start of a line, or accidentally get strings in there without escaping "'" characters and there can be issues.
XML Property-lists (plist) are also a common way to serialize data in Cocoa. It is also trivial to generate from other languages and some good libraries exist out there.
You are not saying how complex your data structures are and if you actually need state handling.
If you want to keep your network traffic to a minimum, while still keeping some of the structured features of XML, you might have a look at JSON. It is a very light weight data encapsulation framework.
There are some implementations available for iPhone, for instance TouchJSON
Claus
I would go with simple HTTP. NSURLConnection in the Cocoa libraries make this pretty simple. Google Toolbox for Mac also has several classes to help parsing URL-encoded data.
I think it's obvious that REST is the new king of servers communication, you should definitely use REST, the questions should be what REST methodology you should use and what coding language, in my post I present few very simple implementations for REST servers in C#, PHP, Java and node.js.