I want my mobile app to connect to my website to get/post data from and to the database, respectively.
I was looking up RESTful APIs (which I don't really understand how the file writing and retrieving gets data from the database), but another method I was thinking was to do the following. Make my app use normal HTTP Requests to specific "API-like" pages. The request can set certain variables to pretty much act like an actual user accessing the page.
For example, to register a user to my site I could POST a request with the postString look something like this:
"registeruser=true&username=NewUser123&password=SecretPass123&email=..."
Would this method be appropriate? Would it be slower than an API? Should I look into using an API instead? Obviously I would place checks to ensure proper client-credentials are in place before it can make any requests.
100% of the requests made by the mobile app will be to get and post data to and from databases.