iPhone authentication process - iphone

Question

I have trouble finding info on this topic. Please help me out here.
I need to pass arguments via POST or GET method to my web server and get a reply.
Basically, if using GET method, I want to do something like server.com/?user=john&password=smith and receive the dynamically generated HTML code that is done with my php script. All this without using the web browser on my app.
How is it usually done?

Answer 1

You'll want to look into NSMutableURLRequest and NSURLConnection.
For example, you could use them like this do to a GET request to your server:
- (void)loginUser:(NSString *)username withPassword:(NSString *)password {
// GET
NSString *serverURL = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"http://yourserver.com/login.php?user=%#&pass=%#", username, password];
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:serverURL];
NSMutableURLRequest *req = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
NSURLConnection *connection = [NSURLConnection connectionWithRequest:req delegate:self];
if (connection) {
connectionData = [[NSMutableData alloc] init];
}
}
This will send an asynchronous GET request to your server with the query string containing username and password.
If you want to send username and password using a POST request, the method would look something like this:
- (void)loginUser:(NSString *)username withPassword:(NSString *)password {
// POST
NSString *myRequestString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"user=%#&pass=%#",username,password];
NSData *myRequestData = [NSData dataWithBytes: [myRequestString UTF8String] length: [myRequestString length]];
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:#"http://yourserver.com/login.php"];
NSMutableURLRequest *req = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
[req setHTTPMethod: #"POST"];
[req setValue:#"application/x-www-form-urlencoded" forHTTPHeaderField:#"content-type"];
[req setHTTPBody: myRequestData];
NSURLConnection *connection = [NSURLConnection connectionWithRequest:req delegate:self];
if (connection) {
connectionData = [[NSMutableData alloc] init];
}
}
In order to get the response from the server, you will need to implement the NSURLConnection delegate methods, for example:
#pragma mark -
#pragma mark NSURLConnection delegate methods
#pragma mark -
- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge:(NSURLAuthenticationChallenge *)challenge {
// Called if you have an .htaccess auth. on server
NSURLCredential *newCredential;
newCredential = [NSURLCredential credentialWithUser:#"your_username" password:#"your_password" persistence:NSURLCredentialPersistenceForSession];
[[challenge sender] useCredential:newCredential forAuthenticationChallenge:challenge];
}
-(void) connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response {
[connectionData setLength: 0];
}
-(void) connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveData:(NSData *)data {
[connectionData appendData:data];
}
-(void) connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didFailWithError:(NSError *)error {
[connectionData release];
}
-(void) connectionDidFinishLoading:(NSURLConnection *)connection {
NSString *content = [[NSString alloc] initWithBytes:[connectionData bytes]
length:[connectionData length] encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding];
// This will be your server's HTML response
NSLog(#"response: %#",content);
[content release];
[connectionData release];
}
References:
NSMutableURLRequest Class Reference
NSURLConnection Class Reference
Hope this helps :)

Answer 2

Usually this is done using a NSURLConnection. You can also use NSString's method stringWithContentsOfURL.