I'm trying to make my Monotouch app work with WCF service. Everything works fine but every now and then (10 - 30 service calls), app crashes with SIGIL. Debugger says just that.
It happens on random places.
Another employee works on iPhone app which uses same service. Same problem, but more frequent.
Everything works great when testing on simulator.
If somebody's had same problem, please help. Would using asmx service help?
Thank you all.
Cheers
WCF is a bloated option on high traffic servers at the best of days, using SOAP in a mobile application is a enough of a waste of resources that it should be considered bad practice.
ServiceStack is a much leaner and faster option that also allows you to access your same web services with ServiceStack's strong-typed, code-gen-free Service Client's using .NET's fastest JSON and JSV Text serializers.
The MonoTouch versions of ServiceStack's service clients is available separately from:
https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack/tree/master/release/latest/MonoTouch
And an example MonoTouch application that showing how to use is available here:
https://github.com/ServiceStack/ServiceStack.Examples/tree/master/src/MonoTouch/RestFilesClient
Not much an answer, but I had a similar issue. Worked for a long time to get my desktop WCF client code running on MonoTouch, only to have the app die after 10 or so calls on SIGIL.
Symbolicating and analysing the crash reports showed the app dying somewhere in the WCF stack every time. However I could not distill the issue down into a trivial, reproducable example.
In the end I used the ServiceStack framework (http://www.servicestack.net/) to throw a simple XML REST endpoint in front of my service, and called it using simple WebClient requests and some helper methods to push my objects to/from XML (DataContractSerializer was too slow).
If you have access to the server side, this may be your simplest approach.
Related
In my iphone application I am calling (by SOAP post method) a web service which is written in .net and hosted on a server, and its all working fine. But my doubt is, can we write a web service in objective c? And host it on a server? so that we should be able to access it from any of the platforms like .net, php and objectiveC.
I read a fantastic tutorial regarding this question some time ago here.
To be honest, it can be quite difficult to really use this in a productive environment. If you want to get all the features and tools Apple gives to you (what seems to be the intention of your question), you'll have to use a Mac in order to run your service afterwards.
In my opionion using PHP for example (if you need a db also backed up by MySQL) is much easier. Almost all hosters support it and you won't have to worry about setting up a bunch of macs and connecting them via solid and stable cables to the internet (and with that: guarantee availability).
Yes. A web service is just some application that can provide a service over the web. As you can create an application in Objective C, it can be a web service the same as made in any other language.
You can make it run on any server where you have an objective C compiler, however, the framework you use may restrict your choices to the server (ie, you can write objective C on windows, but you wouldn't be able to use the NS framework)
Web services are not limited to a programming language, however you do need to find if there is any framework using objective-c can run on specific server. For example, iiS allows you to use Asp.net which could be implemented using C# or VB.Net.
From the clients who will consume web services, they don't have to be a specific type of device. I think that's the point of web services. The messages travel in between is formatted. For example, a SOAP message is using xml, and that would ensure the message travel on HTTP. Therefore no matter you use iPhone or Android or Blackberry, you should have no problem to make web service calls.
So in general, I think you have to see what kind of web services you want to create, and then see if Apple(I assume) can provide you with a good framework to do it. In terms of client side, as long as your web services are using XML or JSON, it should be well supported.
Hope it helps.
I have a web app, that also has an iPhone and Android app using the same API. It hasn't yet been made publicly available, so I wanted to look to convert from SOAP to REST.
I was only able to find a few tutorials that go into thorough explanations of how to code a REST web service, and of those I only found the MSDN one useful. The problem is I got really confused when they started using URI data types inside the object.
My question is, if you are converting SOAP to REST, do you have to recreate all the objects to add the URI? Am I not able to just have a REST entry point, then call one of the classes that retrieve the data?
Once the REST service is made it will only be used by my mobile apps, but not the website (since that can directly access the classes), which makes me not want to change the objects to add a URI. Is that a correct assumption to make, or should the web services also be called by the website?
Sorry if these are newbie questions, but I am struggling to get my head around REST, and I haven't had much experience creating the architecture of potentially high user base apps.
If anyone is able to point me to an actual code set, that would be helpful.
Edit: I am using VS2010, coding in C# and .Net 4.
Thanks a lot,
Andy
Im doing a very similar thing right now :). Rest via wcf isnt too hard, you do have to sometimes add your endpoints in the web config and give it the [webget]/[webinvoce] attributes in the refrence.cs of the web refrence when consuming though c# which is annoying.
Here is a code set i used when getting started. There are a few more on code project too.
I am in the process of scoping the development of an iPhone app for a client. Among other things, the app will allow users to browse through and place orders on specific (tangible) products.
The client has a website that currently does a similar thing and due to their limited budget and the fact that the website runs on a third-party proprietary platform which they have no control over, we are investigating possible alternatives to building a web service.
On the website, user registration and authentication, as well as order placing is done through POST requests via secure HTTP. The response is always a formatted HTML page which will contain strings indicating whether the request was successful or not, and if there was an error, what the error is etc.
So provided I can replicate the POST requests on the phone, and parse the HTML responses to read the results of each request, do you think this is an acceptable alternative to building a web service to handle this?
Apart from the possibility of pages changing (which we can manage) and the fact that I will probably have to download and parse a relatively large HTML response, are there any other drawbacks to this solution and is there anything else that I might be missing?
Many thanks in advance for your thoughts.
Cheers,
Rog
You could create an intermediary server that will communicate with the client server, and on it expose some REST web services with json (small overhead and easy to handle) responses that will be consumed by the iPhone app.
So, you're going to parse HTML and formulate POSTs off a third-party server, and pray that they don't even so much as rename a form field.
Your question is in two parts:
Do I think that a miracle is an acceptable solution? I don't.
Do I think that aside from the fact a miracle is required, are there any other drawbacks? None that I can think of.
You didn't ask, but this is a terrible course of action. Two suggestions.
I spy an assumption that the providers of the third-party platform aren't interested in enabling third-party applications by providing an API. They have a very good business reason for this, which is that it promotes platform lock-in. Reach out to their support department and have a talk with them.
You have to sell the client on building an intermediary web service. To at least try to mitigate the damage that changes on this third-party platform can do to your app, I recommend that you build and operate a proxy that receives requests from your applications, and proxies them over to the third-party platform. You should build into this client-server protocol a means for returning "we are in maintenance mode, go away" messages to apps, for that inevitable day when the third-party server changes something that breaks your app (they swapped the billing and shipping address pages, for instance) and you have to rush through an update through Apple to deal with it.
The proxy could be written in something more flexible and easy to bash stuff out in, such as PHP, Python, Perl, or Ruby. It could be hosted at Amazon in a micro instance.
p.s. This question is inappropriately tagged objective C.
HTML is the worst because of parsing (1-2secs per page), memory, and changes, but you already know that. Check in advance that ALL the data you need is exposed on the HTML.
If you use an intermediary server you are moving work elsewhere and you have another server to maintain. I would only do that if memory is an issue. Check How To Choose The Best XML Parser for Your iPhone Project for memory/performance/xpath support. libxml2 is a good option, but it depends on your needs. And maybe you'll want to check ASIHTTPRequest features before using the SDK.
I think utilising the web language of JSON would contribute to the diminishing of the parsing time. By building a REST service that, when sent a GET request, returns the correct information for easy sorting, you could then display the output a lot faster than that of parsing straight HTML.
I prefer JSON over XML, but everyone has their personal preference. You should look at a few very good libraries that are built specifically for parsing purposes of both XML and JSON.
For XML I recommend using the inbuilt libxml parser. Albeit, this can sometimes deem very difficult to use. A simple Google search will bring up a heap of results that relate specifically to what parser should be used depending on what task is to be completed.
As for a JSON parser, I recommend SBJSON. I am currently using it one of the biggest projects I have undertaken and it is definitely working perfectly for my use.
If you need a good way to connect to a RESTful web service, you should try LRResty.
Don't go for a parsing solution on the iPhone for 4 reasons:
Server can change their design and break your application (AppStore submition is long) + They can also detect that the request are sent from an application based on user agent which you have to update the application to change it.
Some of the requests might be made thru Javascript so you not only have to parse (X)HTML but also Javascript request (which can be in the form of XMLHttpRequest, but don't have to)
Long term evolution of the mobile market : maybe your client want (or will want) an application for android, Blackberry, Bada OS (Samsung), Symbian (Nokia/ OVIStore), Java Mobile or Windows Phone 7?
Of course network traffic, Memory and CPU needed to parse HTML (look the time it takes to the browser to do it?)
Regarding the traffic, if the application will not have a huge traffic you can home-host your proxy. Or you can find some provider to host it for you. I guess you won't need more than a couple of Megabytes of storage but maybe traffic. For less than 100€/year you can find some with unlimited traffic (like OVH Pro plan or Infomaniak). But if you want to go Java have a look at Google App Engine : you pay only if your traffic is important and if your application generate many CPU Cycles. If not : you don't have to pay. And it's hosted on Google server : reliable.
If the client is open, you could consider the paypal API.
We have a web-based BI reporting product. We have exposed certain webservices which mainly return html content and do authentication.
We are in a initial process of developing an iPhone App, which will interact with these services and get data on iPhone.
There are couple of things we need to make sure before we start with the actual development process...
1) Should we use SOAP or REST (Will have to write the server part in Java) for the communication between iPhone and our web-application?
2) If we use SOAP, Can you suggest something, which will effectively create web services stubs in Objective-C.
3) In either case (SOAP or REST), what security mechanism is suggested by Apple?
We want to know your thoughts on the best and effective way communication could be done between iPhone app and backend servers (mostly written in Java)
Thanks in advance.
If it is an option, I'd use REST
Never did it, but may this will help: http://abhicodehelp.blogspot.com/2010/12/handling-soap-with-iphone.html
I'd do any HTTP-Communication using ASIHttpRequest. It is SSL-capable
In my apps I use simple URL requests returning XML / Cocoa-touch plists over https. I guess that's called "REST" -- it's simple and quick to implement. There are long flame-fests over SOAP vs. REST -- I just use this technique and get my apps done :)
i want to read and write data to a website (server on web) and don't have any information about webservices and other things that related to it
Does anybody have any idea about how to start it (mean offer complete books,papers,tutorials,websites,… or what should i learn at first mean is it necessary to learn xml,soap,... and other things)
Thank you
I've used Google App Engine with great success. You would format your data to output as JSON and use an iPhone library to read it. I've used this one (though Touch JSON seems to be more popular).
Read about REST, ROA and AtomPub. Thats got me started. I'm about to implement some webservices in WCF (WCF now acts like a RESTFul webservice, but you can also use plain old SOAP). Before I got to WCF, I experimented with RoR. RoR uses REST "out-of-the-box".