Head First Python

Chapter 8. Mobile app Development: Small devices

Putting your data on the Web opens up all types of possibilities. Not only can anyone from anywhere interact with your webapp, but they are increasingly doing so from a collection of diverse computing devices: PCs, laptops, tablets, palmtops, and even mobile phones. And it’s not just humans interacting with your webapp that you have to support and worry about: bots are small programs that can automate web interactions and typically want your data, not your human-friendly HTML. In this chapter, you exploit Python on Coach Kelly’s mobile phone to write an app that interacts with your webapp’s data.

The world is getting smaller

Coach Kelly is continuing to use his webapp every day, but he’s having a problem with his new smartphone.

There’s more than just desktop computers out there

Who knew that your users would try to interact with your webapp using something other than a desktop computer or laptop?

It’s a diverse computing environment out there.

Coach Kelly is on Android

The coach has a lovely new smartphone that’s running Google’s Android operating system. Sure enough, when you check it out, the webapp is way too small and not much use on the coach’s three-inch screen:

Obviously, the coach needs to access his data and run his webapp on his phone...but ...