Build mobile apps for Rails sites — Would XML/JSON passing be the best approach?

[Alec Taylor]

Good evening,

I am strongly considering building my project using Rails.

My project will provide a web-interface and a mobile app.

I was thinking to build the mobile app from XML sheets, i.e.:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<mobile version="3.1.3">
<newstory>text here</newstory>
<newstory>text here</newstory>
<newstory>text here</newstory>
<newstory>text here</newstory>
<pinned><newstory>text here</newstory></pinned>
</mobile>

Then I could easily parse the XML file using Qt and display it in a neat way in the mobile app.

I'm not sure if this is the best approach, so am open to recommendations.

Thanks for all suggestions,

Alec Taylor

[Peter De Berdt]

Or you could just stick with HTML and go for PhoneGap, gives you just about every mobile platform you could ever wish for.

For your data exchange, JSON is probably the best one. It's much less verbose than XML in just about any case. In any case, for mobile devices (and even for a snappy desktop experience), you want to build your app to transfer the least amount of data possible. Plenty of resources about that around the web.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

[Alec Taylor]

Sure, happy to use JSON as the format.

I wouldn't want to use anything like PhoneGap, since I am also
integrating hardware components.

Not too mention I have C, C++, Ruby and Python skills to leverage, so
native app development is no problem.

In fact, I was considering open-sourcing this whole mobile JSON
interfacing format, in order to gain community standardisation.

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[Dhaval jain]

Yeah its a good idea to open source.

Go for it.will surely contribute to it.

Regards
Dhaval

[Dhaval jain]

Hi ,

I would suggest JSON instead of XML. JSON is very light weighted compared to xml and will help in faster proceesing of data on the mobile apps.

Thanks,
Dhaval

Alec Taylor

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