I've been trying to find a solution to run an http server on an iOS device, which is accessible from anywhere as long as the encompassing app is open and running.
While searching for solutions I've come across several libraries, one of which is Cocoahttpserver https://github.com/robbiehanson/CocoaHTTPServer
While I see many people use this for setting up a local httpserver and accessing it from the same app, I am not sure if this can be accessed from a remote browser--for example my desktop browser. So here are my questions:
Is this possible? (running an iOS web server which can be accessed from anywhere, not just local network)
If it is possible, is it possible to set a static domain that will redirect to my iOS server?
1) Yes, it can be achieved. Either use the CocoaHTTPServer, which is a great library - or you can look at some tutorials on the net, like this one http://www.cocoawithlove.com/2009/07/simple-extensible-http-server-in-cocoa.html
2) Unfortunately no, because the devices will have different IP depending on the internet connection, and the domain name can be only used with one defined IP address. You could also use the Bonjour name, however it would be probably easier to use the IP address.
Related
I'm looking for a way to managing and controlling IoT devices without the (constant) need for a remote server to be part in it and with a PWA instead of a native application on the managing device. The resulting goal is an IoT device that keeps working when a product eventually goes obsolete (no more server running/allocated) and having an application that has PWA benefits like always up-to-date, easy to replicated and cheaply hosted on something like S3.
As an example, let's say I have one or more IoT devices of different classes like an ESP8266 and a Raspberry Pi for instance. Just as with any new IoT device I want to add it to the network and from there on manage its state from an app. The app in this case is a PWA instead of full blown native app.
1) Traditionally, in the initial setup a native app would scan for wifi networks, connecting automatically to one that has the right name. Using PWA's we are limited to just the "state" of the network. So users would have to manually switch to the network of the newly connected IoT device. This is okay.
2) Next up, the user would need to enter his/her wifi credentials. There might be methods to set this up automatically using a native app, but I don't believe this is the case on a PWA. This, also, is okay.
3) The device then restarts, tries to connect to the network set up in (2). If set up correctly it should get its IP using DHCP. And now things get difficult. I want to 'discover' that network from my PWA. There used to be a way to retrieve the IP from a device using the WebRTC API. but that since has changed to show an obfuscated mdns that resolves to localhost. The ip leak would have allowed for a browser based network scan, but that is no longer possible. I always hoped that Android would default to using a users router as a DNS server, but that is not the case. The result is that simply using an mDNS isn't an option either. I do not want user having to check their router, install an app like fing or do anything else that disrupts the flow from a UX perspective.
Step (3) needs to run every time the app starts so you'd want something reliable. Scanning for devices isn't possible using a PWA, so I need to find another method. I was thinking of something like the way Docker containers can find each other in between networks (see etcd for example), using a predefined key that is shared during installation. The problem with this, is that it requires a remote server to store the IPs attached to that key. I don't want that.
Ideas on how to solve this are very much appreciated! I want to be able to offer a solution that would work even when WAN is out. That being said, I am aware that a connection to a remote server is needed if the end user would want to enable any voice assistant or wants to control a device from WAN.
Im developing an app where one iOS device act as "server", and other devices are acting like clients.
Im getting hard time with understanding if I can make this using Bonjour
If I make an example:
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All devices have same app installed. All users are connected to the same WIFI.
User must login into app, and when it does, chat rooms are populated from CMS (web server) from internet.
All of them see e.g. all "chat rooms". But at the beginning chat rooms are all read only. Anyone can browse these, but nobody can write into them.
When administrator (user with admin privileges) opens one of the chat rooms; all clients are now able to write into "open" chat rooms.
Of course when one user writes something down, the other users see the newest comment from him.
Administrator should see all clients in chat room but clients cannot see each other.
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All samples which I have found (WiTap, videos from WWDC,...) are using two devices only. I've installed WiTap on 4 devices. And I can establish connection and working "sample" game with two devices.
Can Bonjour service be used in such way that multiple cients are connected to one "server"?
Any hints are very welcome!
Yes, Bonjour can be used like that: for example Apache on Mac OS X has mod_bonjour so that web browsers can find a web server on the local network. That can mean having one server but multiple browsers: exactly the situation you describe.
One limitation is that the way Bonjour is configured in iOS means that the server and clients need to be on the same local network. It doesn't sound like the situation you describe is compatible with using Bonjour in that way, but then I also don't think you need to. You can use the DNS name of your chat server in the app, so any app can discover the server. The server can also be responsible for discovering which clients are connected and allowing people to find each other (indeed, I guess that's what the chat rooms are for).
This is a good place to start. http://mobileorchard.com/tutorial-networking-and-bonjour-on-iphone/ I have build the same Server and client with the help of chatty. But you will face one problem in iOS5 only, when the iphone will go to sleep mode, the socket connection lost. I am not able to solve this problem. So, looking for help. :)
I would like to make an application for iOS devices that would communicate with a special type of remote device using HTTP POST requests. The problem is that this device would actually act in the role of a client, while iOS device has to be the server accepting the requests. The next problem, host name and port has to be configured statically at the device sending the requests.
While I'm aware it's possible to give it a try using Dynamic DNS services and UPnP/IGD or NAT-PMP to overcome the problem with iOS device being behind the NAT router, I was wondering whether using Bonjour could simplify the problem in some way. I'm quite a newbie in networking so I'm looking for the direction and want to avoid research of Bonjour if it's not going to bring me anything.
Any other idea of how to solve the problem is appreciated as well.
I had a think about this. IMHO you can't guarantee you'll always be able to expose an iOS based service over a WAN (although it's possible) so this isn't practical.
The best solution I suggest is using uPNP to open the device behind a router to the outside world, then have it send an iOS push notification to the iPhone with the details (hostname, ip, port, etc).
The iPhone would then would then have to set up some kind of persistent connection with the firewalled device to receive data.
Bonjour is a good system to discover and connect to services/clients, but only on your local network. I don't think it is a good idea to try it over the internet.
I'm completely new to the iPhone, so this is a newbie question.
The web development environment I use at work is set up on Windows 7, running Tomcat as a web server. Web Apps are tested by pointing a browser to "localhost".
I've been asked to port a web front end to the iPhone. Since I need to use this same development environment I need to connect the iPhone to the PC via USB or Ethernet.
There is this answer:
"http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3132105/how-do-you-access-a-website-running-on-localhost-from-iphone-browser"
but I was hoping to do it without wireless.
Other questions I've researched are about iPhone development, the SDK, etc. I'm not developing iPhone code, only trying to get the iPhone Safari browser to access the IP address of the local PC, 192.168.xx.xx or whatever.
Seems like it should be simple, a matter of cabling?
it would be an issue of cabling... if the iPhone had an eternet jack :)
But the wifi connection is the only "network jack" the phone has that you can connect to your own network directly with, the 3G or CDMA port gets routed via your mobile phone company, nothing you can do about that. Hence the need for WiFi to access non-routable addresses, like ...
Another option would be to make your server internet-routable, like middapark said. Then you can access it via your mobile phone provider's network and the public internet and can do away with the need to use Wifi.
A third option is to create a VPN tunnel from your iPhone to your local network, again via your mobile phone provider's network and the public internet. But I have no expereince with doing that, so I can not give further advice there.
The problem is most likely because you're trying to get your iPhone to view an internal (i.e.: not internet viewable) network. (Address such as 192.168.0.0, 172.16.0.0 and 10.0.0.0 and are non-routable as far as the internet as a whole is concerned.)
As such, unless you can access your internal network via wifi (or you're prepared to expose the machine in question to the internet, in which case you'll need to use a different IP address) this isn't possible.
are there any services running by default on an iphone that would let another ip address communicate with it if the iphone's ip is known?
Yes, technically, you can. There are a couple of issues though:
Mobile IP addresses usually change
When the phone is in sleep mode, its network interface is probably not reachable.
So I don't think you can rely on that for initiating a communication with the phone.
There aren't many options out of the box on a non jail-broken phone. However, you can write your own client application that runs on the phone. It accepts or initiates the remote connection.
And in that case, the protocol is entirely up to you.
If you jailbreak your phone, you can install the OpenSSH package and have SSH and SFTP access to your phone.
I don't know exactly what you want to do with your app, but you can consider create a thread detached from the main one (using gcd) and use it to send/receive informations from a server using JSON objects for example. Sure you can use sockets and write a client or something like that.
I suggested a new thread because you can put it running forever (on a enterprise app, I don't know if Apple will approve a thread running on an App for AppStore).
I had to develop an app with a consistent client/server relationship and it was the way I got it working.