I am just learning about Android Development so excuse me if this is a bit off in nature.
I am wanting to make an app that interacts with a Database from my website, in a sense the two things will be one feeding the other. So with that. I am trying to figure out whats the best way to interact with my server. I don’t want an app thats an app in a browser like environment I want to dev a full app that works independently of the site only sharing the DB and like features. So what would be my best approach?
Is building the app so it can post/get to php files on the server interacting basically through JSON/XML my best and or safest bet or is there a better approach that connects the App to the servers Database that doesn’t require me to open the database to any ip that makes a request.
Just looking for opinions and suggestions here. I figure everyone who’s going to see this is familiar with Android development and best practices where as I could and have surfed blogs and all else but the opinion seems to be 50/50 as to which is best.
We’ve found that providing a proper RESTful web API that hits the database on the backend in whatever language you choose (be it PHP, RoR, whatever) provides a useful interface for any number of uses (your own website, mobile apps, etc).
Then it’s a matter of your Android app interacting with the RESTful API, which is simply HTTP requests. Those can be encapsulated in helper classes to make them straightforward as well.