Xcode JSON Example to Retrieve Data from MySQL using Swift

August 17, 2016 by Belal Khan 29 Comments

Hello friends today we will see an Xcode JSON Example. In last tutorial we learnt how we can save data from iOS App to our Web Server’s MySQL database. You can check the last tutorial from the below link.

Swift PHP MySQL Tutorial

It is really important that you go through the above given tutorial first, before moving ahead in this Xcode JSON Example. So if you have read the previous post you already inserted some data in your MySQL Database. Now the time to fetch the inserted data.

Lets start with creating the server side script. For the server side project I will be working on the same project we created in previous tutorial. So lets start.

Creating Server Side Scripts

First we need a script that will return all the data inserted in JSON format. If you don’t know about JSON then here is a brief definition for you.

What is JSON?

JSON is a light weight data interchange format. It helps our codes to parse or read the data. JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation. You can read more about JSON from here.

Creating Web Service

So lets start creating our Web Service. Open the same project we created in last tutorial in PHP Storm.

First we will create a new function inside DbOperation.php file. So open your DbOperation.php inside includes directory and modify the code as follows.

<?php

class DbOperation
{
    private $conn;

    //Constructor
    function __construct()
    {
        require_once dirname(__FILE__) . '/Config.php';
        require_once dirname(__FILE__) . '/DbConnect.php';
        // opening db connection
        $db = new DbConnect();
        $this->conn = $db->connect();
    }

    //Function to create a new user
    public function createTeam($name, $memberCount)
    {
        $stmt = $this->conn->prepare("INSERT INTO team(name, member) values(?, ?)");
        $stmt->bind_param("si", $name, $memberCount);
        $result = $stmt->execute();
        $stmt->close();
        if ($result) {
            return true;
        } else {
            return false;
        }
    }

    //this method will return all the teams in the database
    public function getAllTeams(){
        $stmt = $this->conn->prepare("SELECT * FROM team");
        $stmt->execute();
        $result = $stmt->get_result();
        return $result;
    }

}

Inside the directory api create a new php file named getteams.php

Now inside the file getteams.php write the following php code

<?php

//including the file dboperation
require_once '../includes/DbOperation.php';

//creating a response array to store data
$response = array();

//creating a key in the response array to insert values
//this key will store an array iteself
$response['teams'] = array();

//creating object of class DbOperation
$db = new DbOperation();

//getting the teams using the function we created
$teams = $db->getAllTeams();

//looping through all the teams.
while($team = $teams->fetch_assoc()){
    //creating a temporary array
    $temp = array();

    //inserting the team in the temporary array
    $temp['id'] = $team['id'];
    $temp['name']=$team['name'];
    $temp['member']=$team['member'];

    //inserting the temporary array inside response
    array_push($response['teams'],$temp);
}

//displaying the array in json format
echo json_encode($response);

Now execute this script, and note down the URL, in my case the URL is http://192.168.43.207/MyWebService/api/getteams.php

So our Web Service is ready, as you can see we are getting a JSON String as a response. In Xcode side we will get this response and parse it. And this is how we communicate with an external web server. So lets move ahead in Xcode Side.