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

Rails
1

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"?> text here text here text here text here text here

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 T.

2

On 21 Nov 2011, at 11:29, Alec T. wrote:

text here
text here
text here
text here

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.

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

3

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.

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 10:58 PM, Peter De Berdt

4

Yeah its a good idea to open source.

Go for it.will surely contribute to it.

Regards
Dhaval

5

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