Question

OK, I have a login screen that sends username and password to a PHP page. The PHP page echo’s Yes or No based on the login status, but I would like it to echo the user id from the database for further use. Do I have to use JSON for this? I dont know how to retrieve more than one echo’s. Currently the code is:

- (IBAction) login: (id) sender
{
NSString *post =[NSString stringWithFormat:@"username=%@&password=%@",usernameField.text, passwordField.text];

NSString *hostStr = @"https://www.mysite.com/login.php?";
hostStr = [hostStr stringByAppendingString:post];
NSData *dataURL =  [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL: [ NSURL URLWithString: hostStr ]];    
NSString *serverOutput = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:dataURL encoding:   NSASCIIStringEncoding];

if([serverOutput isEqualToString:@"Yes"]){


    UIAlertView *alertsuccess = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Business Manager"   message:@"Login Successful"
                                                          delegate:self  cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil, nil];

    [alertsuccess show];
    [alertsuccess release];
    RootViewController *viewMenu = [[RootViewController alloc]
                                    initWithNibName:@"RootViewController" bundle:[NSBundle mainBundle]];
    self.rootViewController = viewMenu;
    [viewMenu release];
    [self.navigationController pushViewController:self.rootViewController animated:YES];

} else {
    UIAlertView *alertsuccess = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Error" message:@"Username or Password Incorrect"
                                                          delegate:self   cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil, nil];
    [alertsuccess show];
    [alertsuccess release];

}

}

Now I just want to pull one more echo called “ID”. Forming JSON for this seems arbitrary.

Answer 1

Technically you can use whatever response format you want — though it’s best to stick with something standard as you’ll be able to find libraries made for you already. A REST service with a JSON response is a pretty easy way to facilitate communication between a server and client, so it would probably be a good idea to start there.