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Web Developers look inside

Trigger Happy

Moderator
Hi Guys,

So I'm not too shabby at general development stuff, however when it comes to web development I am pretty nooby. What I want to do, is make a small app for my phone to keep on top of notifications coming from this fine clan site of ours and to do so I will need to figure out all this web jazz.

I'll be doing this in C# to make a Live Tile for Windows Phone to just show an appropriate number indicating the notifications received here. I'm not too sure how complex this needs to become (aka storing cookies) as I believe all I would need to do is some sort of Auth with the site using POST (or REST? I dunno) and then from there get the part of the site that I need and do a bit of parsing on the html served back. So I guess my first question is, what should I be looking at? REST, POST, Cookies? I can look into tutorials once I know the basic idea of how to go about this, but at the end of the day it will be a good learning experience and the result will be something I want to use so any input from seasoned devs or other inquisitive minds is welcome.

Thanks,

Trigger
 

Black Racoon

Head Poncho
Staff member
I actually think they do... at least for iphone I believe... either way if your wanting to login from this app you would need to manage some post data, you may be able to avoid cookie like data by resending auth details each time perhaps but it may cause vbulletin to reject your requests then.
 

noobItUp

Super Moderator
Staff member
Hrm Trigsy, I used to be hands on in web dev but these days I sit in my ivory tower and tell dem web devs wot to do.

If you were doing this in java, i could probably point you in the right direction, but c# is not my game.

POST and REST are 2 very different things. Might want to brush up on the basics of http before charging head first into this.
 

Trigger Happy

Moderator
Hey guys,

Thanks for the feedback.
@cows, BR. Yeah there might be some apps out there but I don't think there are any for WP, it tends to be neglected. Plus being a programmer type of guy I like to have control over things and have it done my way :p
@noobeh, Java and C# are similar in terms of most concepts and only really differ in the libraries that are going to achieve the result. Also, there are tons of resources out there that detail how to log in to a site, however this one seems to be a bit more tricky and hence why I was hoping there would be a more webby dev type that could explain the overall concept.

Another interesting feature of this site is the fact that the onSubmit part has the value of md5hash, which then raises the question of whether you post back the variables for the username and password, or if you need to hash them first and then send the hash back to the server....
It is hard to try and come into an area from scratch and understand this kind of stuff and again I'm not one for reading a whole book on web development for something that I know can be explained in a paragraph by someone who does this stuff often.

I'll see how I go though and maybe I can slowly piece it together with trial and error!

Cheers

Trigger
 
There is an app on the appstore for 1.99 called Forum Runner - Vbulletin
When you load this page on an iphone it asks you to install the app. As far as I know it should send you notifications and stuff like that to the threads you are subscribed to.

Hope that was of help to you.

Otherwise coding it in java maybe your best option.
 

Trigger Happy

Moderator
Hey Evil,

Yeah, iphones tend to get all the good apps, not too sure if they exist for WP as far as I have seen.
Java is not an option either unfortunately!

I did have a crack at this project for a while but then ultimately it died due to lack of time as well as my realisation that I couldn't even put the app on my phone without being a part of the developer program and all the rigmarole that includes. I miss the good ole days of Windows Mobile 6 and under that allowed anyone to go in, make an app, deploy to their phones and enjoy. Nowadays it is all about ensuring everything is monetised and locked down.
/endrant

Cheers
 
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