Does anyone know of any good resources or tutorials on how to write files to Windows Azure and read the files using Objective C? (for an iPhone app)
Thanks!
While not an answer to your question, I will share that if you choose to implement your own Objective-C Azure client, beware that NSMutableURLRequest will attempt to be helpful and capitalize the names of any headers you add to the request, i.e: x-ms-date becomes X-Ms-Date. Azure will barf on this and return http code 403 (bad request), even though the HTTP RFC explicitly states that header names are to be treated as case-insensitive.
That's about where I gave up.
There is a project on codeproject that would likely answer your questions.
OneNote on iPhone and Palm Pré using Windows Azure
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/rinocp.aspx
Is the user of the iPhone app also the owner of the storage account? If so, go for it (though sorry, I have no advice on how to do this in Objective C).
If not, consider the security model. If you're going to give users access to storage, you'll either need to use blobs with Shared Access Signatures (in which case this should be trivial... you don't need to mess with signing the requests), or you'll need to give users the key to your storage account, which is generally a bad idea. (This would allow them to read/write/delete anything they find there.)
You can now download the Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS. This will provide you with either direct access or proxy access to Windows Azure Storage (with the proxy running in a Role of your deployment).
Related
I couldn't find information on how other people solve this, so maybe you can help me out.
What I have
Multiple Services with REST APIs, that are secured using OpenID Connect. Connections between the Services work fine.
Now I have multiple developers, who sometimes need to write and execute local scripts (Python, R, Bash etc.) for quick analysis and testing.
What I want
I want to enable the developers to use the services as easy as possible, but still respecting security concerns.
What I tried
I defined the script itself as a client. Therefore I created a public client in my OIDC product, which is called somewhat like 'developer-scripts'. Using a library which handles the oauth dance, I can then execute the script connecting as aforesaid client. First time, the browser pops up and requests the user to authenticate and therefore authorize the client to use the REST API on behalf of the user. After that, the tokens are cached and I can easily continue working on that script.
This simplified drawing tries to summarize, what I just described
That works perfectly fine and regarding security I'm glad that credentials are not saved on the local computers as it was before with e.g. Basic Authentication. Furthermore, I'm able to control the access to different services on a user level.
Other ideas, which didn't convince me:
every web service also has an public client which can then be used as a client by the scripts (so the scripts aren't defined as clients anymore)
token generation is done somewhere else and the developer just adds the generated access/refresh token to the script
My problem
What concerns me about my current solution is the definition of that client. In the described case it would be either a generic client used by all developers for all scripts, or a new client for every developer who want's to write a local script. The latter seems to be a lot of overhead, the former may be a security problem?
So finally I'm asking the question: Are there any known best practices for my described use case?
EDIT:
I found a small article by [Martin Fowler](https://martinfowler.com/articles/command-line-google.html), he is basically explaining, how he is receiving a token to use for a local script. But in his case, he's using it for one certain use case, and not as a general public client. So unfortunately it doesn't really contribute to my answer.
I need the following functionalities over HTTP.
Does WebDAV provides this functionality and are there any known gotchas?
I am planning to access WebDAV from an IPad/IPhone application. Are there any known limitation in accessing WebDAV in iOS?
READ
WRITE (Create directory, Create a file, Update existing file)
DELETE (File and Directory)
GET DIRECTORY LISTING
WebDAV has all those features. I don't know if there's specific iOS limitations, but there are other WebDAV apps, so I assume you can make it work :)
There's a few good options
Schimera Navigator is known to work,although i've heard of at least some users having problems logging in due to the case of their user name being changed by auto complete. The developer says a fix is coming for that
This video shows another approach - http://youtu.be/4ZYqLBEayrk?t=3m18s
I have a rather simple idea for an iPhone app. What I need to accomplish:
Allow login of users (which means I'll have to store usernames, passwords, and other account info).
Allow users to submit strings that other users can view.
Attributes attached to each string that must be tracked (i.e. "votes, views, comments, etc.).
As such, I assume I'll need to start learning about databases and working between a server and client. I've gotten my feet wet in OSX/iOS programming (specifically Objective-C) before. I want to learn how one can accomplish a data-based application and the needs I listed above.
I've done some light research and discovered something called SQLite (free and open-source is always good). Is this the right path to achieve what I want to do? I'm a total "noob" when it comes to this field of server/client/data "stuff".
Your help is greatly appreciated.
SQLLite is more like a local database. Really, the database that you will use is unimportant. It sounds like a project with webservices. Inside your webservices, you might connect to a Microsoft SQL Server or anything you want.
I think you should study how to setup a webservice that can be accessed in your code. Webservices is not an Objective-C topic, it applies to any platform. Your project is more like a web development project.
You can save user's credentials in keychain.
#Kinderchocolate is right about introducing database into your project.
It hears about a app which need transmitting data among clients.It means your need server database and local database.
For server database,I recommend you to use Parse.Parse is a platform which provide a convenient way to use their server database with Objective-c in your app.This tool will save many times and energy(it's not necessary to learn PHP,Apache,Mysql).Parse is not free of course,but it has a free period and enough for you to examine your idea.
Here's Parse!.
For local database,I recommend you to use Core Data,Which is provided by XCode.Core data is so strong to meet your need.You can find a way to use Core Data in many books.
Go try Firebase for database in the cloud. (On the server). In Swift 4 there is complete support for Firebase and SQLite
I want to keep things as simple as possible and I don't want a complicated security mechanism. Basically I need for a user an ID and an e-mail address and I really don't want to bother about other things. Also, I was a minimum overhead in terms of security (if there is anoter provider who can do it for me, that's even better).
What is the simplest way to do this? I was thinking about incorporating LiveID or OpenID by I don't know what are the advantages/disadvantages.
I am working with the Azure SDK.
If you use the Windows Azure Access Control Service, you can basically outsource all identity management. Take a look at the Windows Azure Platform Training Kit - there's a lab called "Introduction to the AppFabric Access Control Service 2.0" that will get you up and running quickly. Currently, you can choose any combination of the following identity providers:
WS-Federation
Facebook
Windows Live ID
Google
Yahoo!
"Simple" for whom?
The simplest strategy for you would probably be to use ASP.NET's standard SQL-based authentication provider. You just run a script against your database to set up all the tables, and then you use ASP.NET's built-in utility methods to authenticate. Give your user-specific tables a foreign key reference to that user's ID, and you're good to go. We've done this, and never had any trouble with it. It's a tried and well-used system, so you know you won't be introducing any security invulnerabilities by hacking your own solution together. (see SqlMembershipProvider vs a custom solutions)
If you want something simple for the user, then an OpenId solution would be my pick. Set up something like StackOverflow has, where you can let users choose an account from a number of trusted providers to allow them to log in. From the user's perspective, it's really nice not to have to remember one more username and password for one more site.
I want to connect to a remote database(MySQL or SQL Server or Oracle) via internet from my native iphone app. I can't find any API or Framework in System to add. does any one know how to connect to a remote Database? pleased help me. Thank you very much
I'm not an iPhone programmer, but I would suspect you want some abstraction going on.
Instead of trying to make a native database connection work, consider writing some service layer that talks to the database on the back-end, and speaks HTTP to your client application.
Plenty of very good reasons for this. Security concerns chief among them.
One way to do it would be to setup an HTTPS server that wraps your requests. Submit your queries via HTTPS POST. The server setup would be pretty basic and it gives you the chance to do any post-processing before sending it over the wire.
The best alternative is to use webservices to access the information stored remotely.
Bye.
Disclaimer : Shamelessly plugging my own product :)
We've built an online system called Kumulos that allows iOS and OSX developers to build and host online databases in the cloud, while easily creating custom API methods for accessing it. It even builds all the Objective-C bindings for you.
Its really really easy to use and its free while in Beta. We'd love some honest developer feedback :)
Check it out here