Idea: Create an database that I can integrate with an iPhone app.
As I have never worked very in-depth with online databases, I need advice on what methods are best for creating a database. The database would need to contain a list of usernames and passwords to login.
P.S. - I have my own website server.
The easiest thing would be to just use MySQL probably. Then you would define web services that expose basic access to the entities in the database. Best to do those with REST. That might be more than you are up for.
The problem with lesser solutions is that you can't have users just connecting directly to a db from the mobile app. So you have to have something talking to the db.
The other option would be to try to implement the whole thing using Game Center, since that has support for players and scores, etc. Not sure if that would be sufficient. I have looked at it but not in a lot of depth and there are changes coming in iOS 5.
In my opinion there is no need to bother with the iPhone app, just make a mobile version of the website. At the end of the day, you'll have to write the website infrastructure anyway, and with a website there is no need to worry about distribution. You'll even be able to support those using other devices.
If you are still looking for ideas, I learned a lot of what I know of web-based databases from a book called Head First PHP & MySQL (ISBN 978-0-596-00630-3). I already knew SQL and C++ (C++ is similar in many ways to PHP), but you really don't need it with book. It will teach you the very basics of both languages and how to tie them together. It will also give you a good frame of reference to Google solutions or ask informed questions.
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I'm using swift — and the app needs to send a photo and matching text (that a user submits) to a server so that I can download the photo/text.
Would an existing FTP server that I have setup for my website be possible for this application? Or would it make more sense to do something with a web portal?
During my research, I'm finding options like Backendless, Alamofire, Gold Racoon, and various others. They seem like overkill for the simple task I'm looking to accomplish. Is there some minimal service out there that can automate my simple need? If not, which of these options would you recommend for my situation?
Ideally the setup would be free, but I'd be willing to spend up to $100 or $10/month if the service fits.
I'm new to app development so I'm feeling overwhelmed with the options and not sure how to begin researching. I hope beginner questions aren't frowned upon here — I would really appreciate any advise on what I should begin learning to achieve my goal of sending a photo+text from an iOS app to a place where I can access them.
If there are other questions I should be asking to achieve this, please let me know.
For your case there are two main routes to consider
1. BYOS (Bring Your Own Server)
With this option, you are responsible for creating and maintenance of your own server.
Now you can use various services such as Digital Ocean and Amazon for this.
On top of this, you would be responsible for creating your own database and maintaining it as well. Plus, you would need to write server side code along with client side code (the app) in order to instantiate communication between the two.
The advantage of this is that you virtually have control of everything but I think it is pretty clear how painful this task is.
2: BAS (Backend As a Service) Highly recommended
With this route, you simply have to write the app and let another service handle the server side of things. One of the most common ones is Firebase. Most folks including startups go down this route.
There are a bunch of other services out there.
Two Cents:
Whatever option or service you decide to use, I would recommend you make sure that:
a. The service has a good track record.
You do not want something that might end up getting shutdown in the next couple months. I know it is hard to predict this but certain initial guesses/probabilities can be made.
b. Make sure its community is vibrant.
The last thing you as a newbie wants is to be stuck and have no one to help you. Research around and see the different questions people ask and whether or not answers exist.
I'm trying to figure out how to make an iPhone application allow multiple users (that have it installed) share data among them. Now, the tricky part is that I don't want to host a server at my place (very poor ISP services), so I would opt for an online hosting solution. Next, by data I understand them to be able to, let's say, post a comment that would become readable to all the other users and to see what other users have said.
So, in my mind, I'm thinking of either having a file remotely hosted that could be accessed by multiple users at the same time, or a database of some sort or anything like that.
You haven't given us much to go on -- it's not even clear what your question is. If you're just asking how to go about this, I'd suggest the following steps:
Figure out what, specifically, you want the app to do, what data it will share, and who the data will be shared with. Is this an app that you're going to distribute publicly? Will all users share the same data, or will groups of users share with each other but not outside the group? How big is the data, and how is it structured? Can any part of the data change at any time (like a shared document) or will the data just be updated (like a SMS conversation)?
Decide how you want to host the data. If you'll need to serve a lot of users, you'll want some sort of database. If you'll need to serve a LOT of users, you'll want to make sure that your solution will scale easily. There are lots of hosting companies that provide access to databases like Oracle or MySQL, and that may be enough for your purposes. Or, you might want to look into some of the web services options, such as those offered by Google and Amazon. These can be fairly easy to use and have the advantage that they'll scale very well.
Get to work. You'll probably want to build a very basic version of your app around the same time that you're getting the server side working, so that it's easier to test. Once the server side is working and reliable, you can shift the focus back to building out the rest of your app.
I'm trying to plan out an application on the iPhone/Android that could be used to track dates/locations of events and update them as necessarily but I really have no idea what kind of method I should take.
Currently, there's two ideas for methods in my head:
1) Make a mobile webpage/website that could be updated with the necessarily information, then display this particular webpage/website on the App for users to view.
2) Make an app in iOS/Android to do the above without displaying the webpage at all.
The first idea is the easiest for me to grasp, since I roughly know the procedures of setting this method up. Displaying the webpages on a iPhone/Android screen should be relatively easy and this also allows me to only update the webpage with the latest information and all without (hopefully) building some kind of update system for the app itself.
The second idea is probably the better of the two, since I can make use of all the nifty features in the iOS/Android to make some pretty cool (what are the cool things, i don't know yet) things. I'm not exactly experienced in the field of creating apps, and I really have no idea how to start some kind of self-update functionality on an app, seeing all the apps I've done thus far are offline-based apps that does not communicate with anything save for local files. Should I get the App upon startup to download a file (XML or whichever?) to "read" the contents then update as necessarily?
Or should I just go for the first method, since it can be more efficient than the second one?
I'm really lost here, can anyone offer some tips and advice?
I believe that the first approach is a good one but I would suggest the following:
1- Create the website that will do all the business in your mind then
2- Port out the application in an easy way to be a mobile application how? Please have a look into this http://www.appcelerator.com/
3- Another idea that would save you the pain of going into all the above is to create a facebook application, this way you can make use of the facebook infrastructure and you will have the viral effect as I guess thats what you are looking for.
I hope I've introduced a good tips for you.
Just looking for some help/suggestions with this. I require my own server for an upcoming project that will be hosting users websites. I want to build a control panel the user can log into and modify their website which will be stored elsewhere on the server. This all seems easy enough, It's just managing domains and emails that confuse me.
What should I look for to manage domain names and point them to the correct website and also what would be the best way to manage email accounts/set up new ones etc. I want to avoid cPanel/WHM if possible, I'm looking to control most things through the control panel I will be building. So any suggestions on this would be useful as well, as I will be wanting to add email accounts through php (Can be done using a shell I assume?).
I will also be wanting to measure bandwidth used on the websites contained in each users directory, any suggestions on making this possible?
I'm really looking for some suggestions on what software to use to set this up, any advice would be really helpful!
Thanks,
Graeme
It sounds like you've got a lot of creative room. May I suggest a web framework? Django. With it you can build out a nice control panel, it's template system is clean and concise. It's also based on Python and thats why I suggest it. If there is a python module for it, you can use it in Django... so things like altering, creating, etc. local data/files is a breeze. you simply us Python (you can even forget it's "django"), crunch your data and then spit it out (into django... out to templates.. to display to the user).
You'll likely want AJAXY biznazz, their is a nice Django App for that, Dajax. Django has a rich and helpful community and tons of resources. Just hop on GitHub.com and search for Django, You'll find tons of stuff.
Im building a DNS Control Panel with it. Which sounds like a minimal version of what you're doing.
does anyone know how its possible to make a rating system that updates across all application downloads based on other users input. i would preferably like to use this framwork if possible
http://code.google.com/p/agautam-code/source/browse/trunk/iPhone/?r=7#iPhone/RatingView.
is this even possible in objective c?
thank you
If you're asking someone to just give you the code, you're out of luck - it's too big a question for that ;)
To communicate between downloaded apps you will need some sort of sever holding the rating. Then, when a user changes a rating on their app it will pass the rating back to the server and store it there.
Then, while each app is running it will check the server for new ratings and download them. When it's got the latest ratings from the server it will update the UI (using the RatingView you mentioned in your question if you want).
Personally, I'd use the ASI libraries for the iPhone communication and Ruby on Rails for the server part. Both ASI and RoR are very easy to use and there are lots of ruby on rails webhosts out there to host your server for you.
However, you can use whatever you like really, it's up to you.
Sam