title: How to have a native android app authenticate with web backend?
body: <p>I'm working on developing a native android application to retrieve data for a user from my company's website.</p>
  
  <p>Because the data is specific to the user, I need to authenticate with our web server, but I'm unsure of the best way to go about this.  I've been reading about REST/SOAP/HTML form auth, but I can't really find any definite 'this is how its done' anywhere.  I know mobile apps do this kind of thing all the time - just look at facebook/skype/any email app - you have to login before you can do anything.</p>
  
  <p>My question is - <strong>how should I architect the server side code (php) to easily allow me to authenticate a user from my android device?</strong></p>
  
  <p>I'm fairly new to the 'web service' arena - does this fall into that category?  Are there any tutorials you guys would recommend looking at?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>