How do you use Django forms when receiving JSON Ajax requests from an iPad?

Question

I'm sending a lot of JSON requests from a native iPad application to my Django web server. How do I translate forms I use on my website to handle an iPad web service?

Am I trying to solve the wrong problem, should a web service used from native iPad applications be redesigned to use REST-ful requests?

Answer 1

Well, first of all, this question should really be:

"How do I write a RESTful API using Django and JSON?"

iPads are just like any other web browser (client), and they can use javascript, JSON, etc.

Here's a high level description of what you need to do:

1. Write a Django view and map it to a URL, eg: /api/some_action/
2. Write out the body of your view, have it perform whatever action you need on the server.
3. Write the HTML/javascript code which is displayed on a user's iPad, so that when iPad users visit a part of your website (let's say /home/) they'll make a JSON request to your server which talks to the API (eg, sends some JSON to /api/some_action/)

Once your Javascript code sends JSON to the API view, your view should process that JSON, and perform whatever actions you want.

This is the way most web-services are developed.

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

Can the iPad (or iPhone/iPod) browser send PUT/DELETE commands? For me that's the biggest trouble when trying to do REST-like apps in JavaScript.

In the end, what i tend to do is to have small Django views (mostly using the create_update generic views) to handle the HTML/form/model integration; and in JS, i use jQuery's $('#dialog').dialog().load('dialogurl') to open a dialog and load it with the form generated by Django. Be sure to either manage the submit() yourself.

I'd prefer a lot to just write a REST server (probably using Django-Piston) and a full client app on the browser; but so far i haven't found a nice enough JS framework. (pyjamas or qooxdoo sound great, but fall 'just a little short')