[SOLVED] What is the best approach to build a real-time, turn-based iPhone game with Rails as backend?

What is the best approach to build a real-time, turn-based iPhone game with Rails as backend?

I want to build an iPhone game, which is real-time and turn-based, with a back-end implemented in Rails.

The game flow is like the following:

Player A and Player B will queue for a match. Then the server will match these 2 players into a match which is turn-based.

When the match starts, Player A waits while Player B is entering his action, and Player B waits while Player A entering his action.

The game ends after 5 or 6 turns.

What I am planning is that to use "Devise" for user authentication, and a RESTful API. The iOS game client will keep sending request to the server and ask if the opponent has finish his/her moves or not.

Is this approach correct for this kind of application? As this is the first time I use Rails to build an app, I am not sure which approach should be used. And there are far too many libraries or tools to choose from.

And if I use a RESTful API, how can I send request like

has_opponent (when queuing for a match)
take_actions?actions={...} (submitting the user actions at the end of each turn)

Any good suggestions?

Solution

I can't speak to the game-design aspects of the question, but as far as a RESTful API, you could try something like:

GET /available-opponents?ratingMin=XX&ratingMax=YY

POST /actions
{
    "userId": "bob",
    "gameId": 231,
    "actionType": "StingLikeABee",
    ...
}

The only verb in your URI should be the HTTP verb: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.