HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 11
Working with remote
data
— Carl Jung
With very few exceptions, all mobile applications fall into one of the following categories: appli-
cations that just can't work without an Internet connection and applications that are only par-
tially functional unless an Internet connection is present. You can't truly call yourself a good Microsoft
Windows 8 developer until you have learned how to work with remote data across the Internet.
In this chapter, you will practice with data downloaded from a remote location using the HTTP
protocol. First, you will learn how to make an HTTP call to download data. Next, you will face the
more challenging task of interpreting the downloaded data so that you can make use of it in your
Windows application.
The first exercise will show you how to retrieve and display the news feed from a public site. You'll
download a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed and adjust the data so that it displays within a list
view component. The second exercise will show you how to download JSON data from a different
site—the Flickr photo service—and arrange it in a dynamically built layout.
Working with RSS data
Many websites share their content via marked-up text available for download from a public and
documented URL, with the data usually formatted as an RSS feed. An RSS feed is essentially XML text
that follows a fixed schema. RSS is commonly used to publish frequently updated content, such as
blog posts, news headlines, and links to items in multimedia galleries in a standard format. A typical
RSS feed contains a summary of the data available on the origin site plus some additional information,
such as the publication date, the name of the author, and a link to the effective content.
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