I have set up a JSP website on a Tomcat 6.0 server. Now I want to create an Android app to fetch the web's data and view it on the phone.
I have considered three possible plans for this:
Rewrite the website into WAP version and use a Webview to view the WAP on phone. Easiest way, but the app might not look so good.
Use PhoneGap to create a app based on the website. I have no idea about PhoneGap. Based on the information I read online, I think it can manage it.
Create the app from scratch using Xamarin. Hardest plan.
Which approach should I follow? Or can anyone give me some other ideas?
It would be a lot easier (as well as interesting) to write simple mobile clients in native Java/Objective-C for Android & iOS. For an experienced web developer, it would not be hard to create simple apps using articles on Google/StackOverflow. Not to mention that using the native mobile SDKs' is the only way to get an acceptable level of performance. WAP / JQuery Mobile / PhoneGap all provide a less than satisfactory level of viewing performance.
You would have to provide REST web services that perform CRUD operations on your server-side database and return the response as JSON data. You'd also have expose these web services from publicly-hosted URLs'. This would be one approach.
Another approach would be to use something like Kony or Kendo UI. These are both excellent multi-platform approaches. Alas, they are both proprietary (i.e. you have to pay for them).