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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-11T22:01:55+00:00

I am writing an iOS 5.1.1 app for the iPad2 using Xcode 4.4.1. I

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I am writing an iOS 5.1.1 app for the iPad2 using Xcode 4.4.1. I want to be able to locate a local http server running on Java.

Once I am able to connect to the http server, all I need to communicate with it is the url including the port.

My questions:

1) Should I use Bonjour or a DNS Server running on the http server to discover the http server itself?

2) I need to authenticate the iPad2 user with name and password to work with the http server once I discover it.

I need some help understanding how I would go about accomplishing these two steps including source code if available for the iOS 5 and Xcode 4.4.1.

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  1. Editorial Team

    1) Bonjour is pretty easy to tie in with Java apps. If you’re particularly masochistic you can write your own Java-based mDNS (Bonjour) responders (I’ve done it, it’s not rocket science), but the quickest way to get going is to use jMDNS in your http server to advertise its existence. I won’t copy & paste the code samples but they suffice for most applications.

    On the iOS side, NSNetService is your friend. Fundamentally it involves starting a responder in the background to look for services (i.e. your Java app), then calling a delegate when something appears/disappears:

    id delegateObject; // Assume this exists.
NSNetServiceBrowser *serviceBrowser;

serviceBrowser = [[NSNetServiceBrowser alloc] init];
[serviceBrowser setDelegate:delegateObject];
[serviceBrowser searchForServicesOfType:@"_http._tcp" inDomain:@""];

    There’s a guide that explains it all. The protocol hasn’t changed for 10+ years and you count on all modern iOS/OS X versions supporting it. The jMDNS library is pretty well battle-tested at this stage, too.

    You might consider creating your own service type if you don’t want it to be visible to other apps that search for _http._tcp., although this is just a cosmetic thing.

    2) The simplest thing that’d work would be HTTP basic auth; you didn’t say what kind of authentication your app supports or how you make HTTP requests on the client side, but this is pretty well covered already.

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