If you think about it, most world-class iOS utility apps have some kind of web based component. Developers leverage the web in all sorts of ways: synching files across devices, sharing user generated content and presenting web based content.

You can do all this and more when you bring the web into your app.  But, creating a web backend can be daunting process for many developers.  When it comes down to it, you usually have two options when deciding to add a web backend to your app.  Here they are:

Piggybacking On Other Web Services

For many apps, the best solution is to simply incorporate someone else’s web service into your own app.  You will see this in apps like my own, Tasting Notes, that use DropBox for file  syncing and ShareKit for integrating into social networks.  iCloud apps are also part of this category because they are essentially using Apple’s online service for across device syncing.

Most major web properties will let you use their web API to add support to your app.  Many will help you even more by giving you an SDK for Android and iOS because they usually do what you to reach your customers.

This approach can be great because it’s easy and uses web properties that you users are familiar with.  The downfall to this approach is that you have to follow the other companies rules and constraints.  This is fine if you are doing something that matches their service well (like a Twitter client for instance).  However, you are a bit vulnerable to changes to the web API in terms of implementation and policy (again, Twitter has flip-flopped over how mobile developers can use their API).

Also, other web properties are unlikely to map to your own data model objects.  To get that level of integration, you will need to roll your own web service.

Rolling Your Own Web Service

So, if you want more fine grain control over your web backend the traditional approach is to roll your own.  Now this is where things can get interesting.

If you want to get involved with this you will need to do a whole lot more than what you typically need for a mobile app.  To implement a web backend, you will need: a web server, domain name, a software platform like PHP or Ruby On Rails and code that is responsible for the web backend.

This can be a lot of work and you have to worry about issues like server downtime, security and you have to know how to use a different programming language in addition to Objective-C.

But, having a setup like this gives you a very flexible system to implement pretty much anything you want with no ties to another company.

But Wait, Now There Is An Easy Way To Roll Your Own Web Service

There are a few great new services out there that will give you the power as a developer to create a web backend, on the fly, from right within a client’s app.  What that makes is that you can add a few lines of code to your data model classes and they will automatically get posted to a web data store.

One of the best services that is providing this to use is called Parse.  Parse is essentially providing an instant server for your app.  I’ve tried this myself and within minutes I had my web backed in place.  If I had a few hours I could have mirrored the data I posted to Parse’s web service in my Mac, iPad and even web based apps using jQuery.

The guys at Parse explain this best, so click here to find out more about Parse.  Parse is free while in beta and it looks like they will have a pretty fair pricing plan once they are ready to release.

What you think about using a service like Parse for your web backend?