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Here is my scenario: I have an iPhone app (written in Monotouch but that has nothing to do with the design) that has consumables. I give 25 free consumables when the app is installed. If the user deletes the app and re-installs it, he now gets the same 25 free consumables. I need a way to prevent this.

So I came up with the idea of a database on a server (my website host?), which would have a list of UDIDs. If the user's UDID is in the database (that means he has already installed the app) a response is sent back to the app to set the consumable count to zero. If the UDID is not in the d/b, then it is added and the response is so indicated (new app).

I am thinking of using REST (simpler) and a Linux host for the server side. My questions are:

  1. Is there a better way of doing this?
  2. What is the language of choice on the server?
  3. What about sqlREST? (looks very good to me, but will it work in the above scenario?)
SpokaneDude
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  • What happens when the user upgrades or replaces their device, and gets a new UDID? – Jason Jan 26 '11 at 19:34
  • they would have to contact us to transfer the consumables over to the new phone... I'm concerned about cheating (admitted, probably a very small percentage in the population). I also have a new app that needs to store encrypted data on the server, so I need web services for that new app also. – SpokaneDude Jan 26 '11 at 20:05

2 Answers2

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Well, I can tell you what MY language of choice would be: ASP.NET/C# in combination with an SQL Server DB. I have my website running at a hoster which offers this combination for just a few bucks per month.

You don't even need webservices. You could just setup an ASPX page on your server and call it using NSString.FromUrl (or whatever the method is called): "mycounter.aspx?udid=1234". Everytime the page gets called, it increases the count of the passed in device ID and the only thing it ever outputs is the number of remaining requests. Your client parses that response to integer and if it is zero, informs the user.

You should proably add some hashing to make sure that evil Krumelur won't go to your URL and call it for random device IDs, rendering them unusable. :-)

René

Krumelur
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The answer really depends on your web host. And what they support. That probably depends on your transaction volume and so on.

Since you are using Monotouch I'm going to assume you are comfortable in .net/c# world.

I would look at a WCF web service written in c#. This in turn would use SQL server for storage. Of course you could just go straight to a SQL server stored procedure.

sqlREST looks interesting but at a glance it looks like you need to be running the Appache + Tomcat stack for that to work.

if you just want the lowest possible bar to get it working then I agree with the other poster... ASP.NET + SQL server would get it done too.

thrag
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