Captive Web View

This repository holds the Captive Web View library code and sample applications.

Overview

The Captive Web View library facilitates use of web technologies in mobile applications. It has the following features.

Web technologies support.

The library facilitates use of Web View controls as the container for any of the following.
- Whole application.
- Whole user interface.
- Part of user interface.
- Headless application code.
The user interface, and any other code running in a Web View, would be written in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript.

The Android and iOS versions of a Captive Web View application can share the same HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript code.
Object bridge.

The library implements a simple bridge between JavaScript, running in the Web View, and Kotlin or Swift code, running natively.

The bridge can be invoked from either the native end or the JavaScript end, and supports responses.

The JavaScript ends of the bridge interface use JavaScript objects. The native ends use either JSONObject, for Android, or Dictionary, for iOS.
Native user interface division.

The library can be used with applications that divide their user interface into multiple Activity or ViewController classes. A different HTML file can be associated with each native class.
Modern standards from built-in controls.

The library utilises the built-in WebView, for Android, and WKWebView, for iOS. These classes support the latest web standards, such as HTML5 and ES6 JavaScript. Support is maintained by the respective developer teams, i.e. the Chromium and WebKit projects.

The library for Android is written in Kotlin; the library for iOS is written in Swift. There is also a small amount of JavaScript code in the library.

Captive Web View can be seen as a simple version of platforms like Apache Cordova and Electron.

Usage

For Android, see the forAndroid sub-directory.
For iOS, Catalyst, and native macOS, see the forApple sub-directory.

Learn More

Reference documentation is in the documentation/reference.md file.

Contributing

The Captive Web View project team welcomes contributions from the community. Before you start working with Captive Web View, please read our Developer Certificate of Origin. All contributions to this repository must be signed as described on that page. Your signature certifies that you wrote the patch or have the right to pass it on as an open-source patch. For more detailed information, refer to the contributing.md file.

Check the documentation/backlog.md file for a list of work to be done.

License