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iPhone and REST - what's the big deal?

 
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Ben, you've dedicated a whole chapter to developing something for the iPhone. Why is that? I realize that iPhone is a cool new thing (see, I picked it up from the table of contents!) but is there something specific about iPhone application development and REST? Are the programming concepts available or recommended conventions somehow favorable or more suitable to a RESTful interface compared to a plain old get-and-post-requests-is-all-I-need interface?

[Disclaimer: I know nothing about iPhone application development]
 
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There isn't anything about REST itself that makes the iPhone project a natural one (though wouldn't it be great if Mobile Safari were the first popular browser to support HTTP verbs other than GET and POST?) I've actually used that chapter to highlight more precisely some of the features of Rails 2 that support RESTful development, like the ability to send different information down to the browser based on request format.
 
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Also, about the part on Facebook. Will the book tell me what technique is being used when I am customizing my Facebook profile? Or will it show me some new cool ways to customize with my ideas?
 
Ben Scofield
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The Facebook chapter of the book deals with exposing your RESTful application to the Facebook audience, using the FB application platform. It shows how to customize a standard Rails application for the particular challenges and opportunities Facebook brings, as well as how to use the ActiveResource library to create a Facebook-oriented wrapper for an existing site.
 
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A friend of mine plans to buy the new iPhone. I'm looking forward to deploy a RoR project on it Chapter 6 is such a cool concept; Bravo Ben.
[ June 12, 2008: Message edited by: Nikos Pugunias ]
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