Book Image

RestKit for iOS

By : Taras Kalapun
Book Image

RestKit for iOS

By: Taras Kalapun

Overview of this book

<p>RestKit is an iOS framework for streamlining communication with web services, and it relies on the AFNetworking library that is used by thousands of app developers. It has an interface that is elegant and well designed, and it provides a powerful object-mapping engine that integrates well with the CoreData database. RestKit for iOS will teach you everything from loading a simple list of objects to creating a fully-featured app.<br /><br />RestKit for iOS delivers constructive tools and insights into app development that will benefit any app developer. The book starts with a simple example and then moves on to more complex ones as your knowledge increases. By the end of the guide, you will be able to build a fully-featured app that uses RESTful web services and performs CRUD object manipulation.<br /><br />RestKit for iOS will provide you with all the information you need to boost the development process of both simple and complex apps. Once you have executed a simple example and reviewed the basic theory, you will move on to more advanced concepts with descriptions of real-life scenarios and how to overcome bottlenecks. RestKit for iOS is full of real-life examples that show you how to simplify data loading, basic and advanced object mapping, metadata mapping, and routing. This book also teaches you about routing, RESTful object manipulation and synchronization, integration with the user interface, and caching</p>
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Chapter 1. Getting Started

RestKit is a well-known framework without much documentation. Even with its reference manual and accompanying blog posts, not much has been covered, especially in terms of practical usage. Not every developer has the time to indulge in figuring out RestKit on his own before starting a time-constrained project. Sounds familiar?

Learning a new framework comes with its required steps. Before jumping into RestKit libraries, object mapping fundamentals, and data modeling, we need to make the proper introductions. This chapter will start with a simple usage example to warm up the crowd, before elaborating on the whats, whys, and hows of RestKit, in addition to its components. This compact introduction will already have demonstrated how select real-life examples can provide the required insight into the world of RestKit.

As you know, nothing in this world is perfect, and so are REST APIs. Every single API I worked with has its own glitches and bottlenecks. So, we will discuss some of the possible bottlenecks with APIs, how to overcome them, and we will experience a few in the API that we will use in the example.