Apps Query: Sharing comments between users

[Mullanimal]

Hi, I'm currently planning to develop an application which will allow users to share comments (similar to tweets, facebook status', etc.) which can then be viewed by other users. This is only a small part of the app, however it is the one part with which I'm having trouble with.

My issue is that I'm not sure how to go about designing this. I've read up a little about SQLite and creating databases, however I'm not sure this is the route I should be looking at. Essentially what I need is to have an area where users can select a category from a provided list, post a comment to this category and be able to view any other comments.

It would be brilliant if anyone could offer some help on what direction I should be looking into. My experience with servers and databases is quite limited so any help would be great.

Many thanks!

 

[jiminaus]

The comments cannot exist in local SQLite databases stored on individual devices, because other users cannot access those comments.

You'll need a server with the database of users and user comments.

You'll need to expose some way for app on your android device to access those comments stored in the database.

What you DON'T want to do is directly expose the database to Internet in order to directly send SQL command from your Android app to the database.

You DO want to create some kind of Internet server to act as an intermediary. You Android app sends high-level requests (like add comment, get comments for object, etc). The Internet server "translates" those into SQL request for your database. Similarly the Internet server receives the SQL responses and "translates" them into a form that can be sent back to Android app.

You have many, many, many choices here. Too many for me to advise directly.

But you might want to look at REST and JSON. That would be my first architectural choice.