Question

I have set up a LAMP server on aws. I am planning to create a web service with both a web client and an android client. I am not exactly sure where to start. I would like to create a RESTful service but have no experience with it and don’t know where to start. I have hit restful services for the android app that I have created but have not designed one myself.
I have worked with Java and RoR. I would like to learn Python as well if required.
Any suggestions would be great.

question in short: What technology to use for a web service with both a mobile client and a web based client?

Answer 1

Make the user interface using HTML and then get the data asynchronous (eg: AJAX) using JavaScript from the server.

This has the advantage that both the desktop and the mobile client can eventually be the same, while the server can completely ignore the user-interface mechanics and focus on the services you are providing.

If you want to make the mobile client “Native” (eg: android app), then you merely make it “talk” with the server using HTML asynchronous requests.

Edit:
On the server side you can do something like this:

// extract uri from request
$request = explode("?", $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"]);
$uri = explode("/", $request[0]);

// sanitize user input
foreach($_POST as $k => &$v) $v = addslashes($v);

// prepare file input
foreach($_FILES as $k => $v)
{
  if (empty($k) or empty($v)) unset($_FILES[$k]);
}

This give you the request details, then client-side you do requests like:

site.com?php_service/param1/param2/...