Professional iPhone® and iPad™ Database Application Programming

Chapter 11. Integrating with Web Services

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Learning what a web service is and its usefulness

• Understanding how to send data to an XML web service using the POST and GET methods

• Parsing the response messages from a web service and using the resulting data from within an iPhone SDK application

• Building location-based applications using the GPS functionality in the Core Location framework and the mapping capability of the MapKit framework

In the previous chapter, you learned how to ask for data from a web server by sending HTTP requests. You also learned about XML and how to parse the XML that you receive from web servers in response to your HTTP requests. In this section, you will take that knowledge a step further by integrating your application with Internet-based web services.

In this chapter, you will learn about web services and how to use them in your iPhone and iPad applications. You will also explore a couple of other interesting features of the iPhone SDK, including MapKit and Core Location.

This chapter builds on the knowledge that you gained from the last chapter to integrate iPhone SDK applications with web services. I will cover the use of the GET and POST HTTP methods to send data to a web service. You will then build a couple of sample applications that use web services as an integral part of the program.

NETWORK APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE

When you set out to start work on a new project, one of your first decisions involves designing the architecture of ...