Beginning iOS Programming: Building and Deploying iOS Applications

Chapter 10Getting Started with Web Services

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• Making simple networking calls
• Parsing JSON web service responses
• Streaming media from a URL using the Media Player
• Opening iTunes from within an application

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

You can find the wrox.com code downloads for this chapter at www.wrox.com/go/begiosprogramming on the Download Code tab. The code is in the Chapter 10 download and individually named according to the names throughout the chapter.

In the 1999, the phrase Web 2.0 was coined to describe the slew of new websites and services being created. Websites in the past had been static and required new files to be uploaded to servers to change the content of the site. Web 2.0 sites use dynamic content with a back-end data store to update content on the site without needing to update the files on the server. Blogging sites are a simple example, whereas sites such as Facebook and Twitter are examples of more complex services. Users can see new content on the site without having to even reload the page. These sites typically use a set of API calls made using the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, better known as HTTP, to get new content. The set of API calls are known as web services.

Mobile apps have become an extension of these Web 2.0 sites. Using the same set of APIs, mobile apps can move away from needing new builds and releases to update their content and instead connect to these web services to get new data. This ...