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This repo contains source code for a Capacitor plugin based on the Solana Mobile Wallet SDK. The plugin allows developers building apps on web to access the native Android functionality provided in the Solana Mobile SDK.
API documentation is here
The plugin for dApps is here
These plugins were built to illustrate the potential for combining Capacitor and the Solana Mobile SDKs. It was completed in just over a week at the Singapore Solana Summer Camp 2022.It is definitely not ready for production use.
Free and open source. Comments, questions, feedback and contributions most welcome.
This project exists to help drive the adoption of Solana SDKs across mobile & web. The idea is make it easier for more developers to build cross-platform dApps by providing an open source Capacitor plugin based on the existing Solana SDKs.
Capacitor is part of the Ionic ecosysystem and has a large and active community of developers. Capacitor/Ionic is found in approximately 10% of all Apps on Google Play and the App Store and averages around 200,000 weekly downloads on npm.
By offering a Capacitor plugin we make it easier for Capacitor/Ionic community to start building on Solana.
Capacitor is a cross-platform native runtime for web apps. Capacitor plugins provide a bridge layer, which allows web developers building cross-platform apps to access native functionality from a single API.
A detailed description and documentation can be found at https://capacitorjs.com/.
The plugin was built as a to illustrate the concept in just over a week at the Singapore Solana Summer Camp 2022. It is definitely not ready for production use.
The plugin is a wrapper around the Kotlin "fakewallet" Android application built by the Solana Mobile team (see https://github.com/solana-mobile/mobile-wallet-adapter/tree/main/android/fakewallet). It allows a developer building a web app to access to all the methods in MobileWalletAdapterViewModel.kt in the underlying Kotlin project.
The current implementation for Android relies on manifest permissions settings that may require prior agreement from moderators for Play Store distribution.
I propose to run this project on an open source community-backed basis with a permissive license e.g. MIT/Apache2. Solana is already known for the strength of it's developer community so my hope is that there will be appetite to participate in this project.
Over the years I have seen the Ionic & Capacitor team go out of their way to support the Capacitor community. I don't speak for them here but I am sure the Ionic folks would be able to help promote a Solana plugin to the community if we can create something production ready.
Through the Summer Camp I focused on creating a working POC focused on the new Android SDK for the 'fakedapp' provided by the core team. In the long run I see a case for two plugins, one for dApps and another for wallet projects. This would depend on the Solana Mobile team's roadmap and plans for the core libraries.
I will post my notes on a potential API for the Capacitor plugin in the next day or so.
Because the focus was on allowing web developers to access the 'fakedapp' native functionality, some more thought is required around how the 'fakedapp' functionality maps to the functionality provided by the web wallet adaptor.
The demo application fully replicates the 'fakewallet' app.
The Angular demo app which was written in one sitting also needs to be cleaned up to make it easier to see what is happening.
I am not a Kotlin developer so I am sure there is room for improvement within the Android implementation. Currently the approach to managing state in the app is to push data to the web layer, which I suspect is not ideal. Results from the co-routines are returned to the web layer by inserting the plugin calls to the Kotlin functions and then resolving them at the right point in the code.
No serious thought has been given to securing the plugin yet, nor has it been extensively tested.