How do they do it? -> Tap Tap Revenge Feature: "Download new songs"

[grifter000]

Does anyone have any insight into how the makers of "Tap Tap Revenge" are able to display things like contests and notify users when new songs are available dynamically? I'd like to be able to message users in my application too or have them download expansion packs without having to install an update to my app.

Hope someone out there knows.

Thanks.

[BostonMerlin]

You need to have a central place for all users of your app to have access to such as a web server, idisk folder, webdav, ftp server whatever. Amazon s3 is an option as well. I use my own servers to perform all forms of communication. My iphone app communicates back and forth with those servers looking for new information and posting information from users of my app to other users. It'll push pictures, new content, messages and audio from the iphone app up to my server then back out to all users of the app.

Typically you'll communicate with those servers (the cloud) using web services such as rest, json or your own concoction of xml or url string params. It does take some work but having a centralized server opens up many more opportunities for your apps. This is also something not to jump into lightly. There are many points of failure. This involves much more than building an app, pushing to the store and your done. Ongoing maintenance and in some cases costs are required to keep your infrastructure running.

The flip-side of this is to use P2P.. but you'll still want a centralized server to help your users find one another.

Good luck..
john

[turinreza]

Originally Posted by BostonMerlin

The flip-side of this is to use P2P.. but you'll still want a centralized server to help your users find one another.
john

how would P2P work ? how does one get a WebDav server running on each iPhone?
or just one iPhone? how does Air Sharing do it? any thoughts?