I have read through some of the documentation and the forum. Sorry that I might not be right at all as I am rather a beginner in app development. For now it seems to me that the only way to host a web app for using IC as backend is to also host the front end on IC by using raw html or techs like react which uses webpack. It is also possible through hosting in traditional services but seems requiring tweaks to make it work.
As I think I have read some where (forget where I read that) the interaction through the canister is only by HTTPS request to APIs, does that mean I can actually make whatever program or host my web anywhere, and can still use IC as backend through those HTTP API interface
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The advantage of using the IC is to make your life easier, if you consider the complexity of AWS, Azure, etc, so keeping your web dev hosted in the IC is the ideal goal, I think.
Although, there’s quite a lot of development going on in IC, so there might be cases where you’d want to interact with external services, for many different reasons and as simple as transitioning from web 2 to web 3, etc.
The HTTPS documentation you’re talking about is available here, but I do think this is more of a spec and lower-level stuff that you can forget about if you’re using agentjs from your frontend, etc.
My advice is to try to build something very simple, such as a “Hello world” page and hosted in the IC. Then add a service that provides some data to your frontend. See how you feel about it.
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How feasible would be to build a “no code” integration to the IC with Zapier, Integromat, or a similar HTTPS API connector tool? The benefit being to enable anyone to build on the IC very easily, and connect 1000s of apps to the IC instantly. Zapier already has no code blockchain integrations to Hyperledger Fabric (via Xooa) and Ethereum (via Tatum).
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I think this IC <> Zapier integration would be amazing and would accelerate the adoption of the IC, and would make it more interoperable with other apps/services that don’t yet run on the IC.
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The beauty about a Zapier integration is that it would enable anyone to build pretty much any app on the IC using a platform such as Bubble. This is because Bubble is a super powerful no code app builder that has a built-in Zapier plugin. I can’t code but in a few hours I was able to build an app on Bubble that uses a Hyperledger blockchain instance as a database.
Another approach would be to just create an IC plugin for Bubble, such as the Nexus blockchain plugin for Bubble.
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Thank you very much for your answer! Just to be clear, I didn’t mean to use AWS, Azure etc. What I mean is like building an mobile app which interacts with the backend canister directly instead of through a js library which is only efficient in a browser setting. Also may I ask can someone use a dns domain or crypto nft domain for the html of their front end canister? Also lastly a question not really related to the above discussion, are there any specification for building a NFT on IC? Or it is the same as tokenising an app with some tweaks in the code so making the token non fungible? Thank you very much!
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