How To Create an App Like Instagram With a Web Service Backend – Part 2/2

Where To Go From Here?

The complete source code of the project you developed – both Xcode and PHP parts – can be found in this archive.

Edit 31 Oct/2012: Due to popular demand I also added the download of the completed web project in PHP, including thorough comments throughout the code. You can get it here.

Building server/client software is whole other level of complexity above casually whipping out iPhone apps on the weekend. You saw, however, that building step-by-step up from the ground up isn't that difficult.

You can also take some immediate steps on extending your demo project:

• How about adding more effects? Read through the Beginning Core Image tutorial and look into adding more effects.
• Having a simple function-based service is fun, but if you want to be up-to-date on web sexiness, you'll need to look into having a JSON-RPC service.
• It would be nice if the stream of photos refreshed automatically, so that as new photo came in, the user would see them. You can also play on the server side and provide only delta updates (i.e. only the data about the new photos since the last time the user got the list).
• You can think more about how to extend the service (it’s pretty easy to add calls, as you already did). You can add things like comments on photos, up/down voting of photos, and so much more.

I hope this tutorial will help you in building your own web service-based iPhone application and will also give you many ideas on how extend the demo project and get your awesome photo sharing application to the App Store!

This is a blog post by iOS Tutorial Team member Marin Todorov, a software developer with 12+ years of experience, an independent iOS developer and the creator of Touch Code Magazine. You can also find me on Google+