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iphoneipadios4xamarin.iosdistributed-apps

Framework Recommendation for developing distributed iPhone / iPad applications

Is there a distributed application framework (commercial is okay as well) that supports iPhone / iPad ?

What I'm looking for in the framework:

  • Allows me to focus on the application logic
  • I don't have to code "low-level" network programming (I've done it too many times that I dont wanna do it again =p)
  • Should be actively maintained (popular would be nice)

Basically, I can then develop faster.

We plan to develop a soft real-time TCP/IP client/server application where there are many iPhone/iPad clients (30+) connected to single server over LAN. The server most likely will run Windows (unless the framework does not support it).

I've been looking around and I see:

I'm still deciding whether to use Objective-C or MonoTouch, but leaning towards MonoTouch since we will get the .NET framework, and not be tied into just the Mac world.

Please feel free to comment if I added anything that's not related to my question---I'm new to iPhone/iPad world.

Solution

  • We've used WCF/Monotouch with great success - there are some areas of the f/work that arent 100% but for most cases you should find working with WCF on monotouch a breeze.

    The ability to share all of our data sync, model, tests etc between monodroid and monotouch and wm7 is seriously cool (with some working - this is easilly possible - you'll need to manage multiple prj files).

    Be careful to manage calls to wcf services correctly, keep them to a minimum, keep the archetecture simple. We ended up with a fairly complex dto to minimise the amount of calls to the wcf services to sync the data - this was well worth it as the time needed to sync a device from scratch is now a fraction of what it was.

    Using SSL to communicate with the server is a PITA but I think that's more a case of the way apple have managed it.