** MacTechGroup Meeting Wednesday! Nov 4 - 7PM

[Owen Hartnett]

MacTechGroup

The MacTechGroup holds meetings for Macintosh programmers on the first Wednesday of each month at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Next Meeting:
Nov 4 2015 7:00 PM Building E51 Room 315 MIT Sloan School 


NOTE THAT OUR OFFICIAL ROOM IS 315 - but check the other rooms in that corridor!!!!!


Topic: Bridging the Data Divide - Mapping JSON and XML to Objects in iOS Software (Objective-C)

Speaker: Steve Caine


Most mobile apps have a requirement to access data from remote web services in order to present information derived from that data to users. 

To support multiple hardware platforms, text-based encodings of this data for transmission are generally preferred over binary formats. Among these, the most common are JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) and XML (eXtensible Markup Language). 

But then this text must be translated back into binary data for use by the apps’ software, generally using object-oriented languages such as C++, Objective-C, or Java. Sending data back to web services requires a reverse translation.

Common problems generally lead to common solutions. 

A search on ‘json xml’ on GitHub.com <http://github.com/> (home to a vast trove of all kinds of open-source software) returns over 1,800 repositories offering solutions to this challenge. 

A search on ‘JSON’ on CocoaPods.org <http://cocoapods.org/> (site of a popular dependency manager for iOS and OS X software) returns 591 such open-source libraries, plus another 172 for a search on ‘XML’.


I’ll be describing what I learned in researching three such offerings for use in my own and clients’ apps: 

	RestKit - https://github.com/RestKit/RestKit <https://github.com/RestKit/RestKit> (which also provides networking code to access web services)

	RZImport - https://github.com/raizlabs/RZImport <https://github.com/raizlabs/RZImport>

	Mantle - https://github.com/Mantle/Mantle <https://github.com/Mantle/Mantle>


As part of my research, I’ve created three open-source repositories of my own illustrating the use of each to access data on the operations of the Metropolitan Boston Transit Authority (MBTA):

	https://github.com/SteveCaine/MBTA-RestKit <https://github.com/SteveCaine/MBTA-RestKit>

	https://github.com/SteveCaine/MBTA-RZImport <https://github.com/SteveCaine/MBTA-RZImport>

	https://github.com/SteveCaine/NextBus-Mantle <https://github.com/SteveCaine/NextBus-Mantle>

These use either data drawn from the MBTA’s own web service 

	http://realtime.mbta.com/portal <http://realtime.mbta.com/portal>

or from that of NextBus Inc

	https://www.nextbus.com/xmlFeedDocs/NextBusXMLFeed.pdf <https://www.nextbus.com/xmlFeedDocs/NextBusXMLFeed.pdf>

a California company that delivers web-service access to such data from the MBTA as well as from dozens of other public transit agencies throughout North America.

Hear which of the three I finally decided to use for my own software, and why.


P.S. If you're coming, rsvp at Meetup.com <http://meetup.com/>.  People decide they're coming based on how many others say Yes!


************************

You can get a map showing building E51 at
<http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map?oldstate=2&off.x=4620&off <http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map?oldstate=2&off.x=4620&off>.y=1640&hi=bldg_e51&zoom.x=89&zoom.y=38>


The MacTechGrp always meets the first Wednesday of the month. (Sometimes I screw up the date of the notice, but it's always the first Wednesday)

You can get more information on the MacTechGrp and directions at http://www.mactechgroup.org <http://www.mactechgroup.org/>.  We're also on Meetup.com <http://meetup.com/> now - check it out.  Please sign up for our group on Meetup, and swell our ranks.  It's free to sign up.  I'm paying the bill.

To contact the unindicted co-conspirator irresponsible for this group,
email owen at clipboardinc. <mailto:owen at clipboardinc.net>com


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