iOS on Rails

The reference for writing superb iOS apps with Ruby on Rails backends.

This book is really two books in one.

The the first book covers building a backend API in Rails. We will demonstrate how to create a robust, clean, flexible JSON API. Along the way, we’ll discuss different approaches that we didn’t choose and discuss their drawbacks.

The second book walks you through creating an iOS application in Objective-C that uses the Rails API you just created. You’ll learn how the intelligent API choices made in the first section make iOS development far easier.

Download a free sample chapter.

Who is this book for?

This book is for a developer who wants to build an iOS application with a Rails backend. It’s best suited for a developer with some Rails experience and a little iOS experience. It’s also a book for both a Rails developer and an iOS developer to share and use in concert to build an app together.

The approach shared in this book is the result of our own experiments as Rails and iOS developers working together to build applications. The Rails portions of this book assume a basic working knowledge of how to build a web application with Rails as well as the Ruby programming language. The iOS portions of this book assume a basic working knowledge of how to build an iOS application as well as some familiarity with the Objective-C programming language.

More than just a book

In addition to the book (in HTML, PDF, EPUB, and Kindle formats), you also get two complete example applications: the iOS client app and the Rails server application. What the book describes and explains, the example apps demonstrate with real, working code. The apps are up to date for Rails 4 and iOS 8.

The book is written using Markdown and distributed via GitHub. When you purchase, we give you access directly to the repository, so you can use the GitHub issues features to give us feedback about what we’ve written and what you’d like to see.

When you purchase iOS on Rails, you get access all future updates to the book and example applications.

Current Contents

Introduction

• Why this book?
  
• Who is this book for?

Rails

• Introduction to our example application and setup
• Creating a GET request
• Creating a POST request
• Creating a PATCH request
• Creating a geocoded GET request

iOS

• A New Xcode Project
• Managing Dependencies
• The Map View Controller
• The Event View Controller
• Displaying Events on a Map

Connecting the Two

• Building a Rails API Client
• Posting a User with NSURLSession
• Posting an Event with NSURLSession
• Getting Events in an Area

iOS on Rails is written by Diana Zmuda and Jessie Young.