I'm working on an app which I'll hopefully release soon. It's a hybrid app. No, it's not a WebView that loads remote content from a server. It's not a WebView that loads a JavaScript app. Rust isn't compiled to WASM and running in a WebView. It's a local server built with Rust that executes on iOS and Android. The native code makes a request to the local server, receives a response, and renders the HTML response in a WebView. It appears to be performant and is a great developer experience since it's similar to creating a web app.
For the most part, the local server is similar to a web server except isn't bound to a port and isn't running. It's a
stateless function invoked by native code. It's takes two parameters. The appContext which holds things related to the
native app, like the native file system location for the SQLite database. The second is the appRequest which is an
object that represents an HTTP request. The local server receives the request, processes it, and returns an appResponse
which is an object that represents an HTTP response. The native code does whatever it needs, based on the content of the
response. The native code and local server behave in a way that is similar to a client-server pattern.
The local server framework is similar to Actix-Web and actually uses actix-router. It also leverages Diesel with SQLite, handlebars for rendering, and handful of other crates.
The native code is just the glue code between the local server and WebViews. For Android, it leverages a single activity and Fragments to provide native-like navigation between pages. iOS pushes a controller with a WebView on to the UINavigationController stack to handle page navigation. When a user clicks a link or submits a form then the url and data is passed over the JavaScript bridge to the native code and on to the local server. The back action pops controllers for iOS and pops fragments for Android. It's easy to switch to native code by looking at the request coming from the JavaScript bridge and calling native code rather than the local server. The native code is fairly simple, but could be as complex as the apps needs it to be.
I've figured out page navigation, forms, external HTTP requests, JavaScript, CSS, database access, and managing files between the WebView and the native file system. The following are ideas I might pursue as my app(s) need them.
appContext on each request is a bit annoying. Sharing memory between the
native file system and Rust would solve this.