Hi,
Can I build a public accessible iOS/Android and web application, which consumes data from the Dfinity internet computer? When replying, mind point out some documentation or a practical example of it in use and accessible today?
When I say iOS/Android app, it means an application that is available in the Apple App Store or Google Play - the user should not have to install any plugins, extensions, etc. Similarly, a Web App, is accessible by a regular browser, by typing a common domain name (myapp.com, foobar.net, mything.app).
I’ve been following Dfinity for a while and check back every few months, although I haven’t committed any time to develop an application, but interested; As such, I want to make sure that my time is put to good use, as the end goal is to have real people use it.
My expectation is to have a Client UI (ios/android/web) that pulls and pushes data to Dfinity internet computer.
Thank you!
Sounds like the IC could do this. You would need to have your mobile app resolve to the canisters, and have your app authenticate with the canisters, and then have your canisters respond with appropriate services in a format you can easily consume (like JSON). In this case the IC would be invisible to the user. Also check out fleek.co, which seems to be providing alot of the helpful plumbing and services to enable this.
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If I’m not mistaken IC does not support HTTP or websockets anything more high level than TCP. It provides a JS library that exposes an RPC API. Not sure if there is a native iOS or Android implementation of it. If not you will have to run the script mentioned above in a webview to be able to talk to IC
There is a plan to allow raw HTTP access to canisters (see feat: add an http-request interface and icx-http-server bin by hansl · Pull Request #120 · dfinity/agent-rs · GitHub for pieces of it), and then it doesn’t matter if the other side is a web browser or an app on a phone.
And even without that it’s feasible to use the IC-specific RPC interface from a mobile app.
So I think the answer is “yes” 
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