I have a website running on PHP and i need to develop apps for same on Android, iOS and Windows Phone platforms. I guess i need to create web services to fetch data from the website but i am not very familiar with it.
Which one of these approaches will be best from compatibility and ease of use point of view that can be used on all the platforms:
1) Rest based web service
2) SOAP based web service
3) Any other approaches
Also what will be the best response format which can be easily consumed on all the platforms and has in built SDK support to parse them: XML/JSON/SOAP
If somebody came across such scenarios please suggest. Appreciate any responses as i have to start implementing same ASAP.
Thanks,
MG
Current work and experience involving multiple platforms and for ease of development is simply using JSON over HTTP signed with OAUTH.
HTTP because it is available on every platform that supports a web browser (and those which don’t through the use of libCURL) and also allows you to use SSL if necessary and comes with a very well known service infrastructure for scalability.
JSON because it follows programmable object notation allowing you to transfer decodable structures in the HTTP request body and response body. There are many libraries out there, especially for the platforms you are experiencing. This makes it fast to push and pull objects out of the data stream and between languages (PHP server / C++ client).
OAUTH as it is a simple yet surprisingly good authentication protocol using HTTP that works well at identifying both your application and your user, all without transferring the password (token) in plaintext over an insecure link.
Obviously though, one thing to always remember with security, as you are giving your application to a client device you cannot guarantee the client using your web service is the client you built. If you write a successful product you will find your client hacked, its communications broken down and the web service utilised by other pseudo-clients – of course this is all dependent on what the product does and is capable of. Unfortunately the mobile apps world is rife with hacked clients on jail-broken devices. However if by chance you can take advantage of these clients also then the service is even better! (Example, a free-to-play game with premium purchases which are stored and validated on a server you control). For this note as well, you cannot assume your application OAUTH tokens can ever be guaranteed to be secure, OAUTH is not about guaranteeing the identity of the user (as their tokens can be stolen) however it does well to reduce the ability to fake that users authentication without having first gained access to that users account.
Good luck!