Native Mobile Development

Chapter 20. Networking and Our App

Wow. We’ve come a long way with our app. The last chapter, dealing with databases, was a doozy. We’ve now got a great app for browsing through our catalog of books. We can even favorite some books for later to check them out again. That’s great! It’s probably time to set this app aside and start working on another project.

But wait! The librarian from before, our octogenarian guide and muse, ambles up to you from out of the shadows of wherever you’re working and lets you in on a secret that makes your hair stand on end: this isn’t the only library of this type. There are multiple locations scattered throughout the globe in different countries and they all must be displayed in this app to help patrons—such as yourself—unlock the knowledge contained within.

Looks like we’re not done yet with this project.

Now, how might we go about supporting this new feature? It’s possible we could use the same approach as before with our catalog: bundle the list of locations with the app. However, that approach seems a bit static and unchanging. What if a location closes and a weary traveler searches for the knowledge of mankind in vain? It might be best, instead, to use this as an opportunity to finally break down the barriers around this app and let it communicate with the outside world via, you guessed it, the Internet! This will allow our data to be dynamic and changing, just like the world around it.

So buckle up. Let’s dial in and start searching!

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