Building a native mobile application - based on a PHP web-app [closed]

Question

I have had a PHP application developed. I want to use phonegap.com or a similar approach to develop native applications based on the same MySQL database. In other words, connect the mobile applications with the web one.

It needs to do one or two things differently. Firstly, use the native GPS features to determine where a user is - I'm guessing this can just be done via HTML5?

Secondly, send push notifications whenever the web-application user receives a notification.

All of the information is already there, on the MySQL database, and everything apart from the two features above function properly.

I'm am currently having an API developed for everything on the web-application - making it API-centric. In my head, it will be easy to connect the two versions via the API.

For example, a user signs up on the web application. He is then offered to iphone app for download.

Is it possible to get him to log-in with the same via the iPhone. On the other side, is it possible for him to search the database, via the iphone, and "add a new friend" - making the connection of the two users in the friends table - in that, the friend is also a friend on the web-application?

I've been reading a lot on all of the available options and am still very confused! Any help would be very helpful.

Answer 1

I'm not a phone developer myself, however I've just finished building a native Android App which connects to a website and is able to login, do stuff that is possible to do on the website as well. If the GPS tracking integration is using the native features than it is unlikely to use HTML5 (though I'm not sure how it works).

Basically in order to connect to a remote database/server you need to make HTTP requests from the phone to you server side script.

So just to conclude: In order to achieve the result you're looking for the work-flow could look like this:

1.Mobile user fills a form ->

2.App does an HTTP request to a server side script ->

3.script does the hard work (e.g. connects to the database) ->

4.script renders a result ->

5.Mobile app displays the result.

I hope this helps.