[iPhone/iPad] Newspaper app that reads from PDFs on a server

Question

I've just been asked to build an app for iOS that reads our local newspaper. I'm a newcomer to developing iOS apps, but I'm a quick study and I hear around a lot that it's pretty simple. So accordingly, I'd like it to be as simple as possible, no bells and whistles, just straight to the point.
I've already done some basic research on developing iOS apps, so I kind of understand how it works. I'm just posting here to get some answers from actual people instead of doing an aimless, mindless search on the Internet.
Here's what I want it to do:
• Use the same log in credentials from the parent website to gain access to the iOS version of the newspaper.
• Display a scalable digital version of the newspaper pages (like a PDF) so that it's readable on both iPhone and iPad.
• Access the website server (where the PDFs for the pages already are) to retrieve the PDFs and display them.
Now, I know some about putting a simple app together, but I've never dabbled in retrieving and using data from the Internet, much less PDFs. The only way to read the paper online is to read those PDFs, we don't use RSS or anything.
I know it's probably a lot to think about, but I guess I'm asking how simple or difficult it would be to develop this kind of app, and if it's simple, I'd like some pointers. Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

The simplest option is to just have a special login page and navigation on your website that you can access directly from Safari, or through a UIWebView and let the user view the pdf's. You may not even need anything custom if the screen flow of you web site is the same as what you want from your app.
As you become more sophisticated, you can consider downloading the PDF's for local caching and then displaying (if that is even necessary), creating a login screen in your app, and making a webservice call to authenticate, etc.