I have been searching far and wide across the web, and I have not yet found a meaty tutorial on how to go about the following process:
Remote MySQL db hosted on webhost, use a webservice to send data over to iPhone, then parse data into objective-c objects for use in-app...
Why is this not documented anywhere? How do people normally deal with such a situation?
Check out this tutorial. It should give you everything you need to get started with server communication in iOS:
http://www.raywenderlich.com/2941/how-to-write-a-simple-phpmysql-web-service-for-an-ios-app
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I'm working on the application that will record the voice. I want those recordings to be stored in the external mysql database. I know that JSON works well with android and PHP that I can use to connect to DB but it works only with textual data. How can I accomplish this task? What do you recommend to use to send the data? I will appreciate for a link of the good tutorial with examples. Thanks.
There are some different examples on the internet that explain how to use HTTP requests and networking on Android to communicate with a web server. Maybe you could start by looking at some of these http://www.vogella.com/articles/AndroidNetworking/article.html http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-android-networking/
Also, take a look at some of the articles here that talk about how to write a good networking app http://developer.att.com/developer/forward.jsp?passedItemId=7200042
I am looking for a tutorial on how to make an iPhone app that fetches data from and writes data to a MySQL database. I've seen some other threads saying that I should make an abstraction layer so as not to connect directly to the database from my app, but I'm not sure of how to actually go about doing this. Does anyone know of any tutorials that involve creating an abstraction layer for a MySQL database or connecting a MySQL database to an iPhone app?
To clarify, I am looking for a secure method that wouldn't allow people to sniff out my MySQL host, username and password. It seems like the libraries that connect directly to MySQL from the iPhone all have this problem, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
This is a really good tutorial that covers how to communicate with MySQL from an iPhone app using PHP:
http://www.raywenderlich.com/2941/how-to-write-a-simple-phpmysql-web-service-for-an-ios-app
I know only one library, which makes possible connection from iPhone to MySQL. This is port of official MySQL C libraries created by Karl Kraft.
Author published also small portion of samples, which describes how to use this library.
UPDATE (Karl Kraft's broken link)
Instead of link above, I used an archived copy.
not up to date, but this tutorial helped me a lot:
http://codewithchris.com/iphone-app-connect-to-mysql-database/#connectiphonetomysql
Here http://blog.iosplace.com/?p=30 is a snippet that uses the original mysql client lib, and here http://www.karlkraft.com/index.php/2012/01/ is a link to a 3rd-party connector.
Here is a nice tutorial on how to connect to a database using web service layer.
From a practical perspective you could connect directly to a database from an iphone because that is a client server transaction. The problem is that you would need to expose your database server an issue that many would find very disturbing, because you would expose your server which hold your most valuable resource "your data". Of course you can implement and could be a good solution for rather small projects. But you would need to implement the layer which it would be used to connect on the iOS app, adding more complex to the matter.
Using a web service is more reliable even from the iOS developer, because there is a very extensive api for using web service, which offer great functionality (asynchronous transactions, threads management,JSON Mapping, XML Mapping) to name a few.
Use the library OHMySQL. It copes with MySQL through MySQL C API.
My App needs to connect to and grab data from a MySQL database sitting on a server. I've successfully interfaced with local SQLITE databases in my Apps, but this is the first time I've had to interface with a remote MySQL database.
I understand this process involves:
1) the iPhone App sending this request to the server
2) some sort of API gets executed and it does the actual "talking" to the Database on the server, and then it returns the query results as XML (or JSON.)
3) the iPhone then parses the returned information and uses it however it needs to.
What I need help with is step # 2 - the API. I don't know PHP, I don't know PERL - do I really have to learn one of these just to write an API? I thought that this iphone-to-remote-MySQL task would be so commonplace that such API's would already be out there, available freely - but I'm not really seeing anything.
I know Objective-C really well - but should I be using XML or JSON for this? Should I be learning PERL or PHP?
any tips or advice would be highly appreciated.
It's hard to give you a definite answer without knowing more precisely what you are looking at, but it sounds like your web service/API part should be quite light. In this case, it should be quite easy to write it in any language. If you know Objective-C well, it should be very easy to pick up some PHP or Ruby.
You mention PHP and Perl. The good thing I see with PHP is that it's available on any hosting service. For instance, with PHP you can make MySQL queries in a few lines of code.
Otherwise, if the web service lives on a machine that you own or if you have more flexibility, it might be easier to write something using Ruby and a small framework like Sinatra.
Regarding using XML or JSON to serialize the data, this will depend on what type of data your API returns. Generally, JSON will be much simpler and the support is good on both side:
- With Ruby, you can see how easy it is to use JSON here: http://flori.github.com/json/
- With Objective-C, you would use NSJSONSerialization available starting with iOS5.
Well you can talk to remote MySQL server using Objective C client directly from iphone
as show here
i am trying to create an app that connects to a mysql database, downloads the records in the table for the user then displays them in a UITableview which can be drilled down with the data that as downloaded from the mysql database. I would also like the data to be stored locally in something like sqlite. The data would then be modified then uploaded back to the mysql database.
My questions is where do i start? I have read alot of posts on google and they say that its best to connect to a xml which acts as a middle man between the database and the app. How can i create this xml file? is it something that is generated every time the app is launched or something done daily on the server?
If anyone can help me out. i know its a very broad question so if someone can point me in the right direction im not asking someone to right this app just a hand as im lost.
Thanks,
Aaron
I know others have mentioned links to libraries that let you connect to MySQL from iOS. I've not tried them myself but don't rule that out.
To answer your quest, you do not "create" the XML files. Web services are developed in a language, and written as applications. You would in essence need to write another application that runs on a server. That application would connect to your MySQL database. That application would also publish methods for getting at, and updating, data. By virtue of making your server a SOAP web service (in whatever platform), the data will be sent over the wire as XML.
If I have understood you want a kind of ORM?
If so you can check for Restkit and more specifically on the side of the object mapping system. It allows us to synchronize remote object/data locally with the coredata.
I have never used it, but I have seen a great tuto which talking about that here: Advanced RestKit Development (However I think it works only with json messages).
I hope it'll help you in your reflection.
I would recommend looking at XML Parser, Webservice, and Core Data tutorials.
SOAP and XML Response Parsing Samples for iPhone/iPad?
http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/An_iOS_4_iPhone_Core_Data_Tutorial_%28Xcode_4%29
That would be a good start, and I could give you some more material if you would like. As far as setting up your actual web service, I've never done that so I couldn't help you there.
I have been interested in working with a MySQL database in my iPhone or Mac projects. How is a connection performed in Objective-C?
I only had a bit of experience with PHP, but heck, that is a bit too different =/
Check this tutorial for connectivity with SQLite.
You will not be able to connect to MySQL directly from the iPhone. You must use some intermediate layer such as a Web application with PHP.
So, you will have something like this:
iPhone POSTING a request to the WebServer using HTTP
Web Server connecting to the MySQL database
Web Server returning data to the iPhone (XML, plain text)
iPhone processing the data
You can use this technique to query and insert/update/delete data.
Once I found this library for MySQL, and I am aware how it works.
It's a much better option not to deal directly with MySQL, but use Apple's Core Data API.
It allows you to manage an relational database without having to write SQL. It's very fast, very useful. Good stuff.
Try absrd which recycles connections across concurrent threads (queues).
If you want to connect to a MySQL database, use MySQL's Connector/C API library which, as Objective-C is a strict superset of C, you can use without any issues. I helped someone with the installation of it here.