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Chapter 9. HTTP networking and web servi... > Consuming XML and JSON web services
9.2. Consuming XML and JSON web services
In the first section of this chapter, you saw how to connect to the Web and download data via HTTP. This is sufficient if you want to download a file to store it on the device or display its contents as-is, as with our update notification downloader. Most mobile applications that connect to the Web do so for a different reason though: They want to retrieve data from a web service.
Definition
A web service is a set of server-side interfaces exposed on the Internet using web technologies such as HTTP for data transfer or XML and JSON for data serialization. Unlike web sites, web services are meant to be consumed by machines, not human beings.
