I'm using some open source code to launch a game. The game is old, around 11yrs. It is a tick based web based game. It's written in php and using MySQL. Basically I want to port this game to ios, instead of using uiwebview I want to build native controls.
I know that it's bad practice to communicate directly with MySQL from an ios app. So what I want to do is add a RESTful API. I'm new to this and have scoured google for answers, does anyone have any pointers of where to start when adding an API to an existing site? It's quite a complex structure.
Thanks.
Paul.
My suggestion is using a framework that is guided towards building an API. I use Slim Framework for my API back end and it's pretty easy to use. If you create a separate URL for this API or include directly into the PHP project as a class it could work.
Some tutorials to get you started are
Say Hello World with Slim
RESTful services with jQuery, PHP and the Slim Framework
Writing a RESTful Web Service with Slim
Hope this helps,
Wes
I am trying to integrate webconnecter and my own website for automatically syncing from website to quickbook software..
I am trying keith parmer's webconnecter and his php dev' kit.But I think I need to create a web service with C# ,to connect each other..
(I am not fluent in C#.
I need a solve only from PHP..)
these are my references
http://www.consolibyte.com/wiki/doku.php?id=quickbooks
and
http://developer.intuit.com/qbSDK-current/doc/PDF/QBWC_proguide.pdf
I think I am confusing through the lot of codes and reference guides...
Please some one help me to reach to the correct path.
Download the QuickBooks PHP DevKit, and follow the quick start guide.
When you have questions, use the support forums:
https://idnforums.intuit.com/categories.aspx?catid=56&entercat=y
http://consolibyte.com/forum/
You might want to try the search too. There's like 100 other threads about QuickBooks and PHP out there already, and Google provides a ton of QuickBooks PHP search results.
I'm trying to build my own android application, and I was wondering if someone can direct me or help me find a tutorial on what to do to get contents between the two. I've been teaching myself php and web building and now I'm trying to build an android app.
But I have no idea as to how to sync the two pieces together? Say if I wanted to update some contents on my php page, how would it be updated to my android app? I'm also beginner at java, but I do have ambition to learning these things.
Thank you in advance fellow members.
ps I've been messing around with eclipse and the android platform.
I don't know if you wanted to write it from scratch or find some sort of library. I've also just started android development and I stumbled across a project called openmobster.
http://code.google.com/p/openmobster/
It's a library for integrating mobile applications with web based services. They have tutorials and documentation in the wiki section. For example: http://code.google.com/p/openmobster/wiki/AndroidSyncApp
If you were interested in writing something from scratch you should be able to browse the source to see some of the things they are doing.
I'm writing an iPhone app as a hobby project and it will need a web service to provide it with data. It's not very different from what I do at work, but at work I only write views and controllers. Someone else is responsible for writing the model and usually the clients provide the web service.
I have done some web programming before, back when everyone were using MySQL and PHP, so my skills are a bit outdated, but I'm confident that I would be able to pull it of using the techniques I already know. However, I don't want to waste my time using obsolete tools. I've figured out that the state of the art would be to write a REST API. I was thinking that there should be some pretty good frameworks out there that pretty much just gives you a REST API with CRUD functionality as soon as you've defined a model.
I guess my question is: What would be the fastest way to get a REST API up and running? I really just want to focus on writing the iPhone app and not spend too much time on this API. It would be great if I could get web administration and revision history too. I should also add that the API isn't supposed to be public, so support for authentication would be great as well.
Just to be clear. I wouldn't mind a PHP framework. In fact it could possibly be better since I know that my current hosting supports it.
EDIT:
The links below which apparently were good for 3 years are no longer working so I went and found a couple of new tutorials that I think are going to stick around for a while. These are on the Ray Wenderlich site, a very well respected ios dev tutorial site. The first article actually references the broken links below but it is complete within itself:
How To Write A Simple PHP/MySQL Web Service for an iOS App
and the second one has a little twist to it. It used parse.com on the backend and AFNetworking. Both of which are quite excellent.
How To Synchronize Core Data with a Web Service – Part 1
I have fixed the broken links below by finding the articles in the way back machine. People seem to like the links so I will keep them. The links above should provide more food for thought.
I am doing exactly the same thing with my iphone app. I found this article on building a RESTful API in PHP:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130910164802/http://www.gen-x-design.com/archives/create-a-rest-api-with-php/
and there is also a followup article here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130323001500/http://www.gen-x-design.com/archives/making-restful-requests-in-php/
with a link to source code at the bottom of the article.
I have programmed a REST API in ZEND Framework using the Zend_Rest_Controller, on the iPhone I used ASIHTTPRequest. My experience with both where good. At the beginning I had some trouble setting up ZEND and connecting it to mySQL, but once I figured out how to do it I was able to write the API very quickly. I can share more information with you if you have any further questions.
EDIT: There seems to be no official documentation on Zend_Rest_Controller. This link describes how to use it to create your API. You simply have to disable rendering in the init() of your subclass and implement the methods for each REST call.
Just to let you know:
I ended up using Ruby on Rails.
EDIT: Since this answer has been downvoted for not providing the reason behind choosing Ruby on Rails and also no instructions on how to write a REST API with it, I thought I would give you my motivation and some simple instructions.
I started reading a book about Ruby on Rails and realized that all I needed to do was to use scaffolding and I got a JSON REST API for free.
Here's a good guide to get you started: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html
When you have your Ruby on Rails environment up and running, creating your REST API isn't harder than running:
$ rails generate scaffold Post name:string title:string content:text
(Example from the above link.) I also found that Rails is very easy and free to deploy to heroku, which meant that I didn't have to pay for hosting for my very basic, low traffic, REST API. There are many other reasons why I am very happy to work with Ruby on Rails, but that's beyond the context of this question.
I followed a quite simple tutorial for creating RESTful APIs with PHP:
Corey Maynard - Creating a RESTful API with PHP
The main concept includes:
one abstract class that handles the parsing of the URI and returning the response, and
one concrete class that consists of just the endpoints for the API.
What about Python?
I'd use Python, Django and Piston.
I'd generate Django models from your
existent DB using inspectdb.
Add the Django admin to your models.
Add Django Piston to your app.
Profit.
With no experience with Python or Django probably it'll take you a day to develop this solution and all code is unit tested and proved to work.
If you want to use PHP I recommend using the CodeIgniter framework with Phil Sturgeon's REST server:
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/working-with-restful-services-in-codeigniter-2
https://github.com/philsturgeon/codeigniter-restserver
Checkout the following PHP class that follows MVC.
http://www.phpclasses.org/package/5080-PHP-Implement-REST-Web-services-servers.html
Hope this helps.
If you already know PHP, there's nothing wrong with a PHP/MySQL backend. You can send all responses in iPhone-compatible plist xml format, and instantly turn the response into a NSDictionary/NSArray/NSNumber data structure with this short snippet of code:
NSString *response = [request responseString];
NSData* plistData = [response dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
NSPropertyListFormat format;
NSString *errorStr;
NSDictionary* plist = [NSPropertyListSerialization propertyListFromData:plistData
mutabilityOption:NSPropertyListImmutable
format:&format
errorDescription:&errorStr];
I also use the ASIHTTP package for forming URLs, sending asynchronous requets, and receiving the responses, I highly recommend it:
http://allseeing-i.com/ASIHTTPRequest/
You should use whatever languages you are comfortable with for the web service. Any language that can formulate REST responses to requests is fine.
That said, if you want to get something running quickly, I suggest using Python on Google App Engine. It's free and you can use Java instead of Python if you so desire. App Engine supports authentication using OpenID and/or Google Accounts (not sure if they're mutually exclusive) so that should make things easier to code.
As far as making the requests on the iOS device, I suggest using ASIHTTPRequest.
Another option is restSQL, an ultra-lightweight persistence framework. See http://restsql.org. It supports MySQL and PostgreSQL and runs in a standard Java EE container, e.g. Apache Tomcat.
restSQL is a very unconventional data access layer. restSQL is not an object-oriented view of the database. It presents flat or hierarchical "views" of relational database tables. These views are query-able and updatable through a simple REST-based HTTP or Java API. The HTTP interface is based on REST principles, which use HTTP’s built-in features, rather than abstracting away from them.
You want a 'REST API with CRUD functionality' and that's exactly restSQL's sweet spot. You could do this with no code. Simply define your SQL Resources via XML files and start doing HTTP calls against them with full CRUD capability.
I have made a site which can pull and upload videos from and to YouTube,
http://www.tole-rants.com/
This site was made with the combination of Python, Google App Engine and YouTube API. It is hosted at Google App Engine. I did not code the main structure of this application bcos I don't speak Python so I was made with a Python programmer. However, we found that this application has been causing lot of problems, especially on uploading videos.
Now I hope I can code the entire site myself with PHP - is it possible?
Another big question - do I have to host this site on Google's?? Can I just host this site on a normal/ standard server which I normally do when I develop a website?
I have read the documentation about YouTube API for developers, but I still cannot get my head around if I want to make this site from scratch with PHP.
It seems to suggest that using a PHP framework - Zend Framework, which I have no clues about it - do I really have to use a PHP framework then?
Any thoughts/ better suggestions or any online tutorials/ books I can follow through?
Many thanks,
Lau
No you dont have to host it on Google's. You can host it anywhere. And you don't need to use the Zend Framework. What they are suggesting is that you use the Zend framework's GData library to communicate with YouTube API. But you wouldnt even need that. YouTube Data API documentation is complete with examples. I am sure it will help you. But ofcourse if you have some specific questions you can ask them here.