I'm planning my first iPhone app and I'd like to get some inputs as to how to build it, right from the start. The iPhone app is being built to be paired with a public facing web application that is already built in PHP.
I'd like the web platform to be central (data is housed in a mySQL database), and have the iPhone clients talk to it and use REST'ful methods to perform the functions of the site (fetching latest content, posting content, voting, account management as examples).
I'd like the clients to get a local copy of the data in a SQLite database, but refresh to get the latest version of the feed (similar to the Twitter app).
Couple of thoughts I have right now:
Use something like ASIHTTPRequest to send/recieve data to PHP files on the server listening for requests
JSON - would I be better off to send the GET/POSTS to a PHP that returns JSON objects, and work with some sort of wrapper that manages the data and communicates changes to the local SQLite database?
Am I totally off in how I should be building this thing to communicate with the web? Is there a best practice for this?
I'd really appreciate any input on how you would architect this sort of a setup.
Thank you,
EDIT: After reading my own post again, I know it sounds like a Twitter client, but it is NOT, although it has similar features/structure of a Twitter type setup. Thanks!