I'm trying to build a basic social iOS app in the new iOS 6 beta as a proof-of-concept project to improve my iOS development skills. In essence I want to allow users to generate an account, store some info in the cloud, and then be able to pull their info (and that of their friends) into the device. I already have a front end roughed in on the device but I now need to start the networking component and am looking for suggestions for any libraries, frameworks, tutorials and/or guidelines to use.
I was thinking of building the server end with node.js and mongodb as I already have a RESTful API built on them which I can adapt to this task. Is this the best way to accomplish such an app? I'm open to any suggestions.
A couple more networking library suggestions:
1) AFNetworking - https://github.com/afnetworking/afnetworking . This is widely used (more so now that ASIHttpRequest has stopped development). It is modern and block-based. However, it is not ARC yet.
2) MKNetworkKit - https://github.com/MugunthKumar/MKNetworkKit . Modern and ARC based.
I switched all my apps from ASIHttpRequest to AFNetworking and highly recommend it.
All the frameworks mentioned so far (ASIHttpRequest, RESTKit, AFNetworking, MKNetworkKit) will talk to a node.js/restful API backend just fine.