iPhoneOnRails.com Launches

February 4th, 2009 by ryan

What’s Going on Here?

I’m happy to announce that we’ve finally put some effort into polishing off this little turd of ours called ObjectiveResource into something that we feel is ready for public consumption.

What is ObjectiveResource?

In case you haven’t inferred the purpose from the name of the site or however you found us, ObjectiveResource is a framework we developed while working with and for some great people that simplifies the process of integrating native iPhone applications with supporting web services.

More specifically it is a port of Ruby on Rails’ ActiveResource to Objective-C on the iPhone. Out of the box it provides the ability to consume XML and JSON based RESTful web-services, the likes of which most Rails applications already publish.

How Does it Work?

So enough with the executive-level summary, I’m sure most of you want to see the goods. I’ll leave the heavy lifting to our getting started page and screencast, but here’s a small snippet of what using ObjectiveResource looks like:

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@interface Dog : Objective@interface Dog : NSObject {
    NSString *name;
    NSString *dogId;
}
@property (nonatomic , retain) NSString *name;
@property (nonatomic , retain) NSString *dogId;
@end

[ObjectiveResourceConfig setSite:@"http://localhost:3000/"];
NSArray *dogs = [Dog findAllRemote];

If you like what you see it might be time for you to go download ObjectiveResource and start hacking away. After all, does the world need another iFart or does it need a web-connected, offline capable productivity app that syncs with one of your favorite sites? I’m not sure I want to know your answer, but I’m firmly in the latter camp.

Who are We?

“We” refers to Y|Factorial, LLC. We’re a small software development shop that has strong Rails AND iPhone backgrounds (hence our commitment to ObjectiveResource). However, this site is not intended to be a banner ad for us … though we won’t complain if our work here makes you think of us in the future.

Josh Vickery and James Burka have done most of the heavy lifting to get us where we are right now, and will most likely continue to do so. They’re also the friendly folks you’ll probably be interacting with if you want to slap a question up on the mailing list.

What’s the Future Like?

While ObjectiveResource started out simply as an ActiveResource port, our ambitions for it have grown a bit. We now see the need for several independent but complimentary frameworks to support the various needs of web-connected native iPhone applications including local persistence, synchronization strategies for offline-capable apps and a number of utilities.

As most of us here at the shop are from Ruby backgrounds we’ll be looking to Rails for naming and structural inspiration. Hence the beginnings of ObjectiveRecord, ObjectiveSync, ObjectiveSupport etc…

While we currently are only confident in saying that ObjectiveResource is ready for prime-time, do stay tuned to see how the entire ObjectiveX stack pans out. We’ve got some cool ideas that we’d love your feedback on and contribution to – so subscribe to the blog and our mailing list to have a say. Despite my involvement we like to think of ourselves as a meritocracy – all voices are welcome.

Thanks to Terralien, Medaxion, LLC and Blazing Emblem for being a part of this effort!

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