title: IPhone App - Consolidating Web Service API Calls
body: <p>Lets say you have an iPhone Application that connects to your own backend API (PHP, Python, etc).  In your iPhone App, you'll be using the Google Maps API and storing unique identifiers to Google's locations in your backend's database.</p>
  
  <p>My question is: Lets say you now need to retrieve this stored data.  Does it make sense to -- </p>
  
  <p>A) Make a request from the iOS App, to your backend API and retrieve the Data (including the Google ID of the location(s) stored).  Then once the iOS app receives this data, make another request from the iOS App, to the Google API to retrieve the details of a location based on the unique ID (lets say it's Address, phone number, store hours that you need).</p>
  
  <p>OR</p>
  
  <p>B) Make a request from the iOS application to your backend API.  When your API receives certain requests (i.e. ones pertaining to locations) your backend makes a call to Google's API to retrieve the locations details, and returns all the data to the iOS App.</p>
  
  <p>OR</p>
  
  <p>C) ??</p>
  
  <p>In general, should the calls to a 3rd party API be relegated to either the iOS App or your backend?  Obviously, I can think of several circumstances where it makes the most sense for the iOS App to communicate directly with the Google API (i.e. Real Time Searching for a location)</p>