CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosweb-services
eric.mitchell
eric.mitchell

Reputation: 8845

Using a web service in an iOS app

How might I go about using a web service in an iPhone app? For example, if I wanted to use a web service that you can use to convert a value into a different unit, how would I go about doing that? For example: http://www.webqc.org/balance.php

Upvotes: 1

Views: 597

Answers (1)

iandotkelly
iandotkelly

Reputation: 9124

It depends what sort of 'web service' it is. If it is a stateless REST style API, passing data in the URL and/or data encoded Json or XML it couldn't be easier, just use NSURLConnection.

Using examples I found on the web I made an application (server and iOS client) - using the NSURLConnection & NSMutableURLRequest, and encoded/decoded data using YAJL. This was pretty easy to get going.

If you don't want to do this using the core libraries directly- there are some frameworks you can use, e.g. RestKit. I've not used it, but it looks good and comes recommended.

If it is a SOAP style web service, this is a lot more complicated as SOAP services often expose a stateful API.

I should say that the example that you show here is not a web-service, whilst it does come with a way of calling it just using a URL - it returns an html page which makes it hard for you to use the results. I presume that you are more interested in a service that returns results encoded as XML or Json or the like.

Upvotes: 4

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