How To Make an iPhone App with MySQL and WordPress

Hello! In this guide, I’m going to show you guys how to make three different types of iPhone apps using web hosting, WordPress and MySQL databases to power them. Many people ask about how to connect their iPhone apps to a MySQL database or how to make an iPhone app for a website. The thing …

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Written by

Chris C

Published on

07 Mar 2014

Hello!

In this guide, I’m going to show you guys how to make three different types of iPhone apps using web hosting, WordPress and MySQL databases to power them.

Many people ask about how to connect their iPhone apps to a MySQL database or how to make an iPhone app for a website. The thing that all of these questions have in common is that they all leverage a web hosting account.

Whether you want to save data externally in a database, create some sort of login system, store media files or host data feeds, a web hosting account can enable all of these things.

In the following tutorials, we’re going to start by signing up for a hosting account together since that’s the magic behind all of the following apps we’re going to build.

Other than that, the only thing you need to follow along is a Mac and Xcode 5. The apps are going to be targeting the iOS 7 platform.

App 1. Getting data from a MySQL database

Then we’re going to build our first app which will retrieve a list of locations from our MySQL database and display them to the user of the app. When the user taps a location, the user will then see a map view of the location.

App 2. Companion app for a WordPress website

The second app we’re going to build will leverage a WordPress website and display the same content as on the website. We’re going to create the WordPress site together and then build the companion app that will parse the RSS feed from the site and display the list of articles to the user.

App 3. Easy app from a mobile responsive website

The third app we’ll make will be a quick and effective way to create a portfolio or informational app based off of a mobile responsive theme of a website. We’ll create a new website, install a mobile responsive theme on it and then make an app that will display the mobile version of the site.

By the end of this guide, you’ll have learned:

– Where to get web hosting
– How to setup your database
– How to connect your iPhone app to a MySQL database
– How to write a simple PHP web service to query your MySQL database and return the results to your iPhone app
– How to make an iPhone app that will parse the MySQL database results and show them in a table view
– How to create a wordpress website
– How to make a companion iPhone app that displays the content from your website
– How to choose a responsive WordPress theme with a strong mobile view
– How to make an iPhone app that leverages the mobile version of your website

And you’ll also have three different apps utilizing your web hosting account in different ways.

1. Setting Up Your Web Hosting For MySQL and WordPress

With the web hosting account being the “engine” that powers the following apps, this chapter is a tutorial for signing up for your hosting account.

2. How To Make an iPhone App Connect to a MySQL Database

With this first app, we’re going to dive right into working with databases, web services and retrieving data from the MySQL database to display in the app. There may be some new material here regarding delegates and table views but if you’ve gone through the introduction series, you should have a nice foundation for it.

3. How To Make a Companion iPhone App for your WordPress Site

This is also a highly requested tutorial. Lot of people have websites they’d like to create an app for and this tutorial shows you how to make an app that displays your websites content. If you don’t have a website, we’ll also go through how to set one up via WordPress. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is!

4. How To Make an App For Your Website In Less Than 30 Minutes

This is another way of making an app for your website but instead of lots of coding, we’re simply going to display your website through an app. If we choose a mobile responsive WordPress theme that looks like an app or portfolio, this can be a very effective way to create an app.

5. Resources For All Chapters

This section contains the links, source code and any other resources for the MySQL, WordPress and app tutorials listed above.

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