Drupal Website to iPhone Webservice API in XML Format - iphone

We have our clients website in Drupal at present, for which we needs to create an iPhone App.
So any ideas on how to do that?
Is there any ready made available plug-ins or modules which we can use to generate Category / Articles XMLs directly from database, without much custom code n its headache?
All your suggestions are most welcome..
Thanks !

Yes. You should start with "Services" module, which will allow you to communicate your website with external websites or applications.
Also, you will need a way to communicate with Drupal. We're using XMLRPC, but you can use JSON, Rest...up to you.
Here you have an starting point: http://www.zivtech.com/blog/simplest-drupal-iphone-app
Services implements the most common used methods for Drupal. Which are node saving/load, comments and users. If you need extra functionality, you will need to create a custom module (rather easy).
You can test all the calls with the Services tab in the Drupal website. Just remember to set the permissions.
There is also a Drupal-iOS SDK, which does almost everything I told you, but uses plist instead. https://github.com/seanhellwig/drupal-ios-sdk

Related

Using CAS without the Login Screen version3.5

here is a old version:https://wiki.jasig.org/display/CAS/Using+CAS+without+the+Login+Screen
I need to do the same with that latest version of CAS i.e. 3.5 . Can anyone provide me the steps for the same
We are doing now basically what you're asking here in my company. We have a Sharepoint website that in background is using the RESTful services for doing the real login. I wrote some posts about them in my blog and recently we used it to get access from a iOS application which contains a link to a sample program.
Important!!! We have a modification in our CAS that offers the possibility to use it for more than one domain. So wherever you find a reference to something called "Domain" in my samples just remove it, as it will not work on standard CASes
Here is a nice solution to your problem.
Just enable restful access.

Connect existing Drupal page with PhoneGap iOS App

Case:
I have an existing page based on Drupal and going to develop a phoneGap iOS App. That means I just need the information of the existing page and want to fill these data in the new app.
My Question is now, do somebody know weather there is a work around or work flow to do so resp. how can I connect the existing page with another page or in my case phoneGap to get just the data? I'm new with Drupal and phoneGap so maybe you have some pages with information, tutorials or some help how to do this.
Thanks in advance yves
Drupal offers a module called "Services" which will allow you to get data or services from your website. You may need to create your own methods on that module to get the information you want to retrieve.
As for the iOS side, you can retrieve the data via XML-RPC, Rest or whatever communication protocol you choose at the server side, or go all the way with drupal-ios.
https://github.com/workhabitinc/drupal-ios-sdk/
You should start looking for the Services module and play with it. You will have an embedded console on that module to test the methods.
Once you're finish with that, take a look at drupal-ios or go deep with your own implementation via XML-RPC or whatever.

How to integrate a comment system in an ios app?

Lets say my web server app is in drupal or wordpress, or even code igniter, how would one get about integrating a comment system? TSpecifically what I am trying to find out is if anyone was able to find a successful approach that would save some time as opposed to me going down the road of tying myself to a specific CMS content system.
Just throwing in some considerations here (by no means complete):
Are users also accessing your content (and its comment system) via the website?
If so, you'll want to have a comment interface that is available on the website too, and the easiest choice may be to use the comment system natively supplied by your CMS / through plugins.
If on the other hand your users will only be using the iOS app(s) for commenting (via a native interface) or you'll be heavily customizing the website anyway, using a comment system independent from your CMS might be an option.
How will the content be accessed from the app?
Via a simple web view? Or will the app download via an API provided by your CMS and display it in a native UI? If you are using an API provided by your CMS, you will have the same issue with your content as with your comments when moving CMSes.
You could add an intermediate layer that abstracts from the specific CMS API.
Or if you don't really plan on moving CMSes but want to prepare for that event nevertheless, you could simply implement a no-frills "version check" to ask the server for the CMS kind / version it is using, and if it doesn't match what your app expects, ask the users to update. This isn't the prettiest user experience, but it might be sufficient depending on what you're actually planning.

How do I sync an offline web app (HTML+JS+CSS) with my server?

Do I need to implement my own sync methods in order to make an offline web app (html+css+js) stay up to date with changes made on the server (and viceversa)? I'm using MySQL on the server side.
I read Two-way sync between iPhone application and web application with some pointers but I think they're talking about native applications when they mention CFUUIDCreate and I wander if this is possible for the Web.
Does someone have some code to share or maybe can point me in the right direction?
Thank you!
P.S.: I hope my english is not that rusty ;)
To store static contents on the client-side, as Jethro Larson said, the Application Cache Manifest is the way to go to cache the static contents of your website (HTML, CSS, JS and images).
To handle dynamically generated contents offline, you can use javascript templates. There are several solutions for this.
To sync the two databases, there is a project called persistence.js (persistencejs.org) which is a javascript library which offers a unique API to work with WebSQL databases, Local Storage, etc. They have a plugin for this library called persistence.sync (persistencejs.org/plugin/sync) which syncs the remote database with the server's one. It consists of POST and GET requests to a specific url that you can configure (for example yourapp.dev/sync). They have an example back-end written in node.js and here is one for Rails. It's simple to understand and persistence.sync is well documented.
Look at the offline cache:
http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/html/HTML5-Application-Caching/
http://www.google.com/search?q=offline+cache+html5
http://www.slideshare.net/search/slideshow?q=offline+cache

How to setup a CMS as a backend for iPhone app

I would like my iPhone app to get dynamic content off the net. This content should be managed using a CMS. I would like to know in particular if I can setup Drupal or Joomla or other CMS as a backend for my iphone app to get the content.
Any advice on how this can be achieved would be helpful.
I am completely new to setting up/using CMS.
You can also take a look at StorageRoom, which is a CMS for Mobile Applications.
Disclaimer: I created this myself to scratch my own itch.
Wordpress with the JSON-API plugin is a great solution, especially if you need a web site as well.
You can find a good example here that uses Wordpress and Phonegap to get a basic app going.
If you can access the content in any serialized format (e.g. XML or JSON), it should be no problem to use any CMS as a "backend" for your application.
I'm checking out storageroom, and I'm searching for a similar answer, but I also found osmek to be a bit promising. I might use that one because of the menu templates .Osmek can provide responses in json and xml (and other formats that aren't useful in iphone dev like php, html, and templates)
Feed.Us is another option. I have a series of travel guides iphone apps and use Feed.Us to manage the businesses listed within the apps.
It creates a URL with XML that gets imported into the app.
This seems to be a very promising solution!
Apache Usergrid
I have briefly tried DreamFactory for some trial project but never got around to using it in production. Usergrid seems to be in the right direction in providing a full fledged solution (which can also work for modern web apps)
I'm very curious about Helios (helios.io) and will be trying it out shortly.
At least from the write-up on their site it looks very promising. Its open source, and in beta currently. They also have very easy heroku hosting support.
Helios is an open-source framework that provides essential backend
services for iOS apps, from data synchronization and push
notifications to in-app purchases and passbook integration.
I will update the answer again once I use this for some test project.
you can use any cms or framework to implement this. you need to make a jsonm api to communicate between app and backend server.
For php cms joomla, drupal and wordpress are best.
in frameworks you can use yii, cakephp, laravel or zend
hope this helps..
Also worth taking a look at Cloud CMS:
http://www.cloudcms.com
It's a cloud content management system for mobile and web applications, entirely oriented around JSON and having a fast, fully featured API. Your iOS application could easily grab things, render them, capture data, store it back into the CMS and more. Plus, it gives you a user interface you can drop in front of your business users so that they can create, edit and review things.
Note: I'm one of the developers. That said, worth checking out if for no other reason than for inspiration.
Depending on the data-complexity, perhaps willing a CMS into being a data-store or simple API is overkill when you can leverage file storage services like Google Drive/Apps to GET/POST spreadsheets or other documents in JSON, among other formats.
Is it possible to use Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive, etc. as a server space?