My original question regarding Consuming Custom Request Methods with Android seems to have garnered very little attention -- I have converted it to an Android specific question
So, quite simply, with iOS5 development, is it possible to consume custom request methods?
If so, how.
The "standard" set of request methods, as per RFC-2616 are:
GET
PUT
POST
DELETE
TRACE
CONNECT
I would like to add another, called SEARCH. On the API, using PHP or Java, this is easy to implement in PHP. The consumption of this new request method is proving to be a challenge for an iOS developer.
Does anyone have any references to working examples or frameworks that will support a custom request method, such as SEARCH, or FOOBAR?
ASIHTTPRequest allows it: http://allseeing-i.com/ASIHTTPRequest/How-to-use
Check out the 'PUT requests and custom POSTs' section.
[request setRequestMethod:#"SOME_REQUEST_METHOD"];
Related
Alright, so a better title here may have been "Progressive Enhancement with REST in CakePHP", but at least now I'll know you didn't read the question if your answer just refers to the difference between the two ;)
I'm pretty familiar with REST and how to integrate it with CakePHP, but I'm not 100% on board with how to still maintain a conventionally functioning website. Using Router::mapResources sounds like a great idea, but this creates a problem with maintaining the "gracefully degradation" version of the site, because both POST requests to /resource/ AND GET requests for /resource/add will route to the same action (add). Clearly I'll want this action to return a JSON object if they're using the REST api, but if they're using the degraded version of the site (no JS perhaps), it should be a add form, right?
What's the best way to deal with this. Do you route your REST requests to other action names using Router::resourceMap()? Do you do that crazy hack I saw to have the /api/ prefix part of the resourceMap so you can use api_action functions? Do you have the actions handle both REST and conventional requests via checking isAjax()? If so, how do you ensure that you can rely on the browser to properly support the other two request types?
I've searched around quite a bit but haven't found anything about how to keep conventional requests available in Cake along side REST, so if anyone has any advice or experience, I'd love to hear it!
CakePHP uses extension routing as well, via Router::parseExtension() so;
/test/action will render views/test/action.ctp
/test/action.html also
/test/action.json will render views/test/json/action.ctp
/test/action.xml will render views/test/xml/action.ctp
If all views are designed to handle the same data as set by your controller, you'll be able to show a regular HTML form and handle the posted data the same way as you'd handle the AJAX request.
You'll probably might have to add checks if any data is posted/submitted inside the /add, /edit, /delete actions to prevent items being deleted without a form being posted (haven't tested that though, it might be that cake blocks these urls if mapresources is set for the controller)
REST in CakePHP:
http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/development/rest.html
(Extension) Routing
http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/development/routing.html#file-extensions
I am new to iPhone application development and working on a web service based application.
I am using NSXML parser in this application and all is working finr, I am able to get the data from server.
But my friend told me that I should include ASIHTTP Classes in this project that is mandatory, but I wonder as I have not used any usch classes as of now and still i am able to fetch the data successfully.
Can any body please explain me what is the purpose of ASIHTTP classes and if i don't use it then would that be a right approach?
I will also need to do Lazy loading in my project so will that be possible without ASIHTTP Classes?
Please help me to clear my doubts.
Thanks in advance.
iPhone Developer
You can obtain any information you're looking for from here, ASIHTTPRequest - How To Use
Alternatively, you can use NSURLConnection
Both routes you can use Asynchronous request to perform lazy loading.
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.
I am new to Three20 and have been trying to develop an iPhone app with Three20 for the past week. This app has to access to a xmlrpc server.
I know it is possible to receive responses in other formats like JSON.
But for requests, instead of the provided HTTP class TTURLRequest, is it possible to send request by XML-RPC?
I created three20 extention for XML-RPC connection.
It's on my three20 fork.
http://github.com/ngs/three20/tree/master/src/extThree20XMLRPC/
Please try this and feedback me.
Cocoa XML-RPC Client Framework appears to do what you want, although it uses the underlying NSURLConnection and friends that Three20 uses, not Three20 itself.
For the record, XML-RPC uses HTTP as its transport layer, so I don't see why you wouldn't be able to use it for that purpose in the first place; the main thing is writing a library that wraps the underlying HTTP transport pieces so you can invoke methods more transparently.
(I.e., you can set HTTP headers as well as the request method (GET, POST, PUT, etc.), and submit data in the body of an HTTP request, so everything is there to support it. Additionally, XML itself can be parsed via the NSXMLParser class, the Open Source libxml2 library, or other third-party solutions (e.g. TouchXML, which is built on libxml2).)
Lastly, there is another SO question regarding XML-RPC on the iPhone in general, although it has many of the same answers.
been wrestling with this for some time. I am trying to access a REST api on my iphone and came across the ASIHTTP framework that would assist me. So i did something like
//call sites, so we can confirm username and password and site/sites
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString: urlbase];
ASIHTTPRequest *request = [[[ASIHTTPRequest alloc] initWithURL:url] autorelease];
[request setUsername:#"doronkatz%40xx.com" ];
[request setPassword:#"xxx"];
Where urlbase is a url to a REST site.
Now, a developer has told me there might be an issue or bug with this framework, and its not passing headers correctly. Is there another way of testing or accessing with authentication a network REST location?
I would recommend checking out RestKit: http://restkit.org/ It provides an excellent API for accessing RESTful web services and representing the remote resources as local objects, including persisting them to Core Data. HTTP authentication is supported out of the box.
I'm new to iOS development and I've been battling with some of the big frameworks listed on this page for the past month or so. It has been a nightmare. I'd honestly recommend you just stick to the basics and do it yourself using AFNetworking or Apple's own NSURLConnection.
One of the libraries listed is no longer maintained. Another underwent huge code-breaking API changes recently and now half of the tutorials describing its use no longer work. Others are massively bloated.
It's easier than you'd think. Some resources that helped me:
http://blog.strikeiron.com/bid/63338/Integrate-a-REST-API-into-an-iPhone-App-in-less-than-15-minutes
http://www.slideshare.net/gillygize/connecting-to-a-rest-api-in-ios
The examples on the AFNetworking homepage alone may get you 80% of the way there.
UPDATE: The Mantle Framework (open sourced by Github Inc.) is well-designed and easy to use. It handles object mapping: converting a JSON NSDictionary to your own custom Objective-C model classes. It handles default cases sensibly and it's pretty easy to roll your own value transformers, e.g. from string to NSURL or string to your custom enum.
I have a couple of apps using a framework called Objective Resource which provides a wrapper for accessing remote REST based api's. It is aimed primarily at Ruby on Rails based applications so it's XML/JSON parsing may be tuned to handle some Rails defaults but it is worth looking at. It supports http basic authentication by default.
Just stumbled on this question - you might find LRResty pretty interesting as it uses NSOperation, blocks etc., see: GitHub for source (MIT license). I'm experimenting with it now - it has a sample app too.
I've used ASIHTTP in two apps so far and have had no problems.
Looks like you're doing HTTP Basic Auth with the remote site. Try hitting the same REST URL from a standard browser and pass the params you need down to it. It should prompt you for username/password. If it makes it through, then at least you know the server-side is set up to handle requests. If it doesn't, then you need to have a talk with the dev.
The next thing to try is put a Mac-based network sniffer and see what headers are going back and forth. Any of HTTPScoop, Wireshark, or Charles should work. Run the sniffer as a network proxy then run your app in the simulator and watch what goes across. Try it again with the browser. Once you see the differences, you can use the addRequestHeader method on ASIHTTPRequest to add any specific headers the server expects.