Question

Assuming I want to create an app that allows users to login. The accounts are stored securely in a server. Some pages are also not visible to users who haven’t logged in yet. Can someone guide me on how to do so? So like how to deal with “sessions” and all that. How would I do that if the database online is MySQL?

On another note, to implement “OAuth” the database has to be OAuth-compatible, am I right on this? And if so, how would I use OAuth on iOS? Is there an Apple API for that?

I appreciate any help / guidance

Thank you,

Answer 1

Let’s do this part by part:

1. It doesn’t matter what is powering
   the server-side of things. Be it
   MySQL, Oracle, SQLite, if you have a
   dynamic language that connects to
   that DB and outputs XML or JSON
   data, you’re set.

2. Dealing with sessions is easy. You
   can use NSHTTPCookieStorage to
   have that handled automatically for
   you. Because sessions are set via a
   cookie, any HTTP request will set
   that cookie locally and send it in
   future requests.

3. As far as permissions go, I would do
   that validation server-side. Because
   you have the session, and you should
   know server-side wether the user is
   logged in or not, just send a list
   of pages the user can see.

4. There are a few OAuth libraries you
   can use. The OAuth project lists a
   couple that seem straightforward
   enough to use. If you’re looking for
   Twitter integration however, a
   question has been asked here
   with pretty good answers.
5. Returning to the server-side of
   things, this can be easily achieved
   using a dynamic language such as PHP
   or using the Ruby on Rails
   framework. RoR is really good in
   that aspect in the sense that you
   can quickly bring an API up by using
   its gems (Devise, OAuth2,
   etc)