This is one very common question asked again and again on stack overflow and I read so many answers about this but I am still bit confused.
I need to call the webservices from iPhone sdk.
Here are my questions:
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I am not clear what response SOAP or REST return.Is there anything specific that if response is XML then we should use REST and if JSON we should use SOAP?
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What is the role of ASIHTTP with SOAP and REST?
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If I am getting XML response as
<oproduct> <iid>113133791</iid> <icategoryid>270</icategoryid> <imerchantid>1547</imerchantid> <iadult>0</iadult> <sname>The Ashes / 1st Test - England v Australia - Day 1</sname> <sawdeeplink>http://www.acbcd.com/pclick.php?p=113133791&a=111402&m=1547&platform=cs</sawdeeplink> <sawthumburl>http://images.abcdd.com/thumb/1547/113133791.jpg</sawthumburl> <fprice>69.99</fprice> </oproduct>
Do I need to parse it by hand? or how do I handle XML response?
I got so many articles about REST and SOAP but no proper code to understand it.
I would be grateful for any help regarding these questions.
SOAP – “Simple Object Access Protocol”
SOAP is a method of transferring messages, or small amounts of information, over the Internet. SOAP messages are formatted in XML and are typically sent using HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol).
So SOAP has a standard how a message has to be sent.
Each soap web service can be defined with a WSDL(Web Service Definition Language) which is kind of a schema for the SOAP XML transferred.
There are many tools available to convert WSDL(your webservice definition) to native code.
One of the tool available for ObjC is Sudz-C (http://sudzc.com/) which convert the WDSL of any webservice to ObjC code to access the Web service.
Rest – Representational state transfer
Rest is a simple way of sending and receiving data between client and server and it don’t have any much standards defined , You can send and receive data as JSON,XML or even a Text. Its Light weighted compared to SOAP.
To handle Rest in iOS there are many tools available, I would recommend RestKit http://restkit.org/, for handling XML and JSON both.
I would suggest you to go with Rest for mobile development, since its light weight
(Simple example, People correct me If I am wrong)