Alfresco + Android & iPhone Development Guide

[petethesweets]

Hi Everyone,

I've been tasked by my employer to demonstrate how we can use Alfresco CMS to develop native iPhone and Android applications. Essentially have data on Alfresco and pull data into these mobile applications. I've been perusing the forums and the web for awhile searching for a how-to guide or books that could help me, but to no avail.

I am aware that there are currently iPhone and Android CMIS client that show you how to access the repository. Are there any other books or resources you'd recommend that I look at? How should I approach this project? It looks as if basically I build WebScript (REST calls) that allow me to pull and push data and then just basically call them in my application?


Any assistance is definitely appreciated. Please assume that I'm completely technically illiterate when explaining things  :lol:  - I'm very new to web and mobile app development.

I appreciate the time your taking to answer my questions!

- Pete

[lotharmärkle]

It is basically that easy. Choose one of the Alfresco Remote APIs and call them from your app. The available ones are
CMIS, the Alfresco SOAP webservices and the standard REST API webservices. With CMIS you have the option to use SOAP or REST with atompub XML. The standard REST API mostly works with JSON as a data exchange format. Another way is exactly what you considered, building a REST API on your own with webscripts (and JSON).

Each API address different integration aspects and covers different areas.

For mobile apps I would recommend to consider the dependencies each remote API would need. SOAP needs a lot of libraries, atompub as well…. so your app might get rather big.

In my opinion using REST with JSON is the most lightweight way. You just need a httpclient and a JSON parser. Use the standard REST API and add uncovered, required functionality with your own webscripts. I used this approach successfully.

Regards,
  lothar