For iPhone and iPad i.e iOS development
Is there a specific server platform required to setup for
development and deployment enterprise apps?
Is there a specific architecture for this purpose? If so which one
since we are will be calling windows web service.
Is an application development server required or can we use an
ordinary pc?
Thanks in advance
Your server doesn't need anything special to distribute apps, we have it working fine on an ordinary Linux box. All you need is:
a URL to an XML file that describes the app
a URL to a png image for your app icon (for use while the app is being downloaded)
a URL to a .ipa file containing the actual app.
some kind of authentication to ensure these URLs aren't publicly available (this could just be a VERY long random string inside the URL, perhaps one that changes regularly).
All of that can be done on any ordinary HTTP web server, without even any dynamic pages.
Some other enterprise features, such as push notifications, will require a programming language that can do some fairly low level network stuff. We've got that working fine with PHP, I'm not sure what would be the best language to work with on Windows.
I'm not sure if this is what you're asking, but you will need a Mac OS X based workstation for writing and compiling the app(s) you're working on. This cannot be done on windows.
1) No
2) It's up to you. For instance you could feed XML or JSON equally on your windows web service. The way you call your server from the client on the app is your decision. Typically driven by a URL.
3) No, an application development server is not required. You can use an ordinary PC if you wanted. I've done this multiple times for testing sure. But for a large audience of course I would recommend something large like a linux server and not a "home PC".
Related
Aren't both necessarily the same thing? While frameworks seem to have extra features to help ease development?
A web server is a program that takes a request to your website from a user and does some processing on it. Then, it might give the request to your Rails app.
An app server is the thing that actually runs your Rails app.
See more in http://www.justinweiss.com/articles/a-web-server-vs-an-app-server/
I just found out that an iPhone can act as a web server to access the app's data. I'm using Xcode. How do I extend my app's capabilities so that users can edit app data using a Mac. Where can I learn about this? Can you give me summary and a website please?
I hope it's using Apache Tomcat. I suppose I have to build a website to process and display the app's data. I wonder if iPhone supports jsp since it's using UNIX. I really don't want to use PHP.
Currently Money Manager has that feature.
Searching for embedded iOS web server returns a few solutions:
Run a webserver on an iOS device
A small, lightweight, embeddable HTTP server for Mac OS X or iOS applications
Lightweight GCD based HTTP server for OS X & iOS
You will be unlikely to fit php or tomcat onto an iOS device; the lack of memory and processing power will be technically challenging.
Apple will also likely take a negative view of the inclusion of a general purpose scripting language in any app your submit to the App Store.
How can i make a lotus application an iPhone native apps?
For e.g: eLeave.
The submit or approve action button in the form was created using lotusscript. So how can it work in iOS ? I have no idea how can i extend my lotus application to an iPhone Native Apps. Someone had suggested to use either SOAP or REST via HTTP to communicate between iOS and domino. But i don't even know what can i do with SOAP in my apps.
Pls help.
The suggestions along the lines of SOAP or other HTTP-based access to the data are correct. Since you can't just port a Notes app to the iPhone (for a variety of reasons) or use the Notes Java API classes (since the iPhone doesn't have Java), some form of HTTP access is your best bet. Either traditional Domino web access via forms or XPages are most likely the best way to go, since then you can write your UI in Designer. If you don't want to or can't do that for whatever reason, you're on the hook for writing the UI for your iOS app separately and then connecting to Domino via Web Services or REST functionality.
SOAP Web Services are probably what you want. They have the advantage of being supported directly in Designer - you can create a Web Service Provider in LotusScript or Java in much the same way you would write an Agent or Script Library. You would have to write methods to access and update the data you want, but it would also mean you have full control over what happens. You could re-implement your form-submission code as a web service call that takes the changed data as parameters and then does whatever manipulation you want and creates/saves the document.
It does depend on the version of Lotus/Domino you are running. This could be a start XPages Mobile Controls I am not sure about the "native"here. This is XPages, web based.
Based on your comment, I know of one native application TSAzr. This application uses XPages as web-services on the domino server. A bit more info can be found here dominoGuru
Your follow-up suggests that a mobile-optimised web application will not cut it, and that you want a native application. This means writing a new iOS application, end of story. There are different ways to go about this of course—e.g. you could build a web app and then wrapper it using something like Appcelerator Titanium, or PhoneGap—but ultimately, you need to write something.
As #Jesse Gallagher has already stated, Notes applications can't be ported directly to an iOS device. Apart from anything else, a Lotus Notes client application is a proprietary data store (NSF) sitting within a C and C++-based client built and compiled for the relevant underlying platform (Win or OS X). There is no direct analogue for iOS other than re-coding your app (of course, you could re-use the existing Lotusscript business logic via web service calls, as detailed in earlier answers).
I'd like to build a simple native iPhone app with tools traditionally used for web apps.
I would prefer to use something like jQTouch and Rails, but I want it to work offline (not require an internet connection or a server).
Is there a framework that enables simple creation of native iOS aps by encapsulating a lightweight web server and a server-side app framework (Rails or something simpler and more lightweight that can run on a phone), thus allowing you to write the client side code in HTML+JavaScript ?
If there is not such a thing, is there a way to create an app (with HTML+JS) that basically only has a client-side component with persistent data storage?
Thanks.
Have you tried Phonegap?
www.phonegap.com
You write your app in HTML/CSS/JavaScript.
You access the phones APIs through JavaScript - boom!
Also; Appcelerator Titanium would be an option: http://www.appcelerator.com/
-IMO Titanium is more powerful, and offers a more native look.
Why would you want to run a webserver off of the iPhone?
Is it so that you could send back data to the mothership?
Yes, you can included a lightweight http server running in another thread inside your iPhone app, and have your UIWebView connect to it. But unless you are going to do a fancier web server that generates dynamic content, it might be easy to just download your HTML/CSS/Javascript content to a local directory, and then point any URLs to those local files when offline.
We are looking on building a project that would run on Android, iPhone and other platforms with Phonegap. The app would be fairly simply, making use of the camera and basic UI features. The first versions would simply point to a web service and load information from there.
Over time, however, we want to improve the speed by:
1.) Downloading content via a separate thread when the app is running and storing the results in a local database,
2.) Hosting a mini webserver in the app*, and
3.) Pointing the PhoneGap UI to the app's mini webserver instead of the service's external webserver.
Two questions:
1.) Is it technically possible to host a mini webserver in iPhone that the app will access?
2.) Would this functionality be rejected by Apple?
Thanks in advance.
*I realize this step probably isn't really necessary. But, if it enables to truly build a "write-once-run-anywhere" UI, it might make sense still.
You're much more likely to want to have the HTML for presentation generated on your actual server, downloaded and stored by your separate thread as an .html file on the iPhone filesystem and served through local URLs using PhoneGap. Essentially, an advanced cache.
This way no web-server is necessary and you only need to write the UI generation code once on the server.