I have an unusual use-case in that I make an app that’s used for a convention on a cruise ship every year, and we don’t have access to the public internet, but we can run our own server on the ship.
Is there a way to do AppFlow (or similar) in a way that works without having to hit the public internet for updates? Am I going to have to roll my own using manifests and embedding an iframe or something?
Interesting use case!
Currently no, since Ionic Appflow currently isn’t offered as an on-premise solution. If that’s something you’d like to discuss more though, we may have options. Reach out here.
What you want to do makes sense though. One suggestion would be to build a progressive web app and host that on your own server on the ship. That way, you don’t have to worry about app stores or online/offline access. Just point guests to the PWA url, and away they go. When you need to make changes, apply them then deploy the PWA again. This is the best path in the sense of “total control.”
BTW, If this is for a conference, see here for a variety of conference app examples we’ve built for the community.
Yeah, that was kind of my thought.
I have a need to access native stuff still though (with custom code), so I would have to run it in a Capacitor container still (bluetooth stuff, local notifications). If I make the app a thin wrapper with a config for the server to connect to, and pull it in in an iframe, will that “remote” app in an iframe still have access to native APIs?
I guess I can answer this pretty quickly with a test app. I’ll give it a shot.