How to set up a database and API web page to accept POST updates from iPhone?

[lionfly]

Hi there,

I am developing an iPhone app, which now can update Twitter account with GPS coordinates in real-time, by the Twitter API link:

http://username:password@twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

, and I am looking at how to make my own database to accept updates from iPhone, via a similar API page.

It seems a .php page can serve as the API, and MySQL can serve as the database.

What are the good ways of doing it? Any template code and tutorial please?

[RobotWoods]

check out w3schools.com, it's a good resource for PHP.

you're going to end up doing something like (here assuming it's just username password):

PHP Code:

<?php
//
here would be your code to connect to the mysql server and db
//
//this takes items sent via POST and makes them easier to cite
$username=$_POST["username"];
$password=$_POST["password"];
//now just do whatever you need to do
$passwordCheck=mysql_query("SELECT password FROM userinfo WHERE username=$username";
$storedPassword=mysql_fetch_row($passwordCheck);
if($password==$storedPassword){
//something
}
else{
//something else
}
?>

[funkytaco]

What RobotWoods said is basically what you need. But this is not a PHP coding forum. Your questions would be better suited to possibly some other section of this website, or another message board.


- Luis

[lionfly]

Hi Robotwoods,

Thanks for the code.

For sending a Tweet, the "setHTTPBody" is just a single NSString for "status=%@".

For the example php code, how should I code the "setHTTPBody" in the iPhone program to POST into the fields e.g. "$username" and "$password"?

The following code is what I tried:

NSURL *phpURL=[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://(test web site)/iphoneupdate.php"];
NSMutableURLRequest *phpRequest=[[NSMutableURLRequest alloc] initWithURL:phpURL];
[phpRequest setHTTPMethod:@"POST"];
NSString *sendToPhp=[[NSString alloc] initWithFormat: @"username:%@, password:%@", sendUsername, sendPassword];
[phpRequest setHTTPBody:[sendToPhp dataUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding]];

How to specify to POST "sendUsername" to the field "$username", and POST "sendPassword" to the field "$password"?


Thanks a lot!

Gary

Originally Posted by RobotWoods

check out w3schools.com, it's a good resource for PHP.

you're going to end up doing something like (here assuming it's just username password):

PHP Code:

<?php
//
here would be your code to connect to the mysql server and db
//
//this takes items sent via POST and makes them easier to cite
$username=$_POST["username"];
$password=$_POST["password"];
//now just do whatever you need to do
$passwordCheck=mysql_query("SELECT password FROM userinfo WHERE username=$username";
$storedPassword=mysql_fetch_row($passwordCheck);
if($password==$storedPassword){
//something
}
else{
//something else
}
?>

[RobotWoods]

Originally Posted by lionfly

For sending a Tweet, the "setHTTPBody" is just a single NSString for "status=%@".

The following code is what I tried:

NSString *sendToPhp=[[NSString alloc] initWithFormat: @"username:%@, password:%@", sendUsername, sendPassword];

You're welcome.

You were almost there:

username=%@&password=%@