Using same Go functions for Mobile, web and desktop apps

[lakshyajain-0291]

Repeatedly writing same client functionality again and again to make them integrate with different kinds of UIs (Mobile, Web etc) is a confusing task. libr is still looking out for best ways to achieve this. Some of the possible options are wasm, wails and gomobile.

[Arnav-Agrawal-987]

Wails is a lightweight alternative to Electron, designed for building desktop applications with a Go backend and a web frontend bundled into a single binary, rather than using a built-in web server to serve web interfaces from Go. In short, to expose the Go backend to the frontend, it auto-generates TypeScript definitions for structs and methods, as well as JavaScript functions for calling them.

Github - https://github.com/wailsapp/wails
Website - https://wails.io/

The setup process for a Wails project is extremely simple and as follows-

• Installation (Requires Go 1.18+)

go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2/cmd/wails@latest

• Project Generation

wails init -n myproject -t react     #React template

• Project Layout

.
├── build/                           #Project build directory
│   ├── appicon.png          
│   ├── darwin/
│   └── windows/
├── frontend/                        #Frontend project files
│   ├── public/                      
│   ├── src/                         #React components
│   ├── wailsjs/                     #Auto generated functions, structs and methods along with wails runtime functions
├── go.mod     
├── go.sum
├── app.go                           #Go backend (functions here will be auto generated in frontend)
├── main.go                          #Application creation
└── wails.json                       #Project configuration

• Development

Dev mode:

• Runs application
• Uses Vite to watch for modifications and rebuild/re-run on change
• Sets up a webserver that serves the application over a browser, also allowing to call Go code from the console.

wails dev

• Compilation

Use the build command to compile the binary and save it to the build/bin/ directory

wails build

[kushagra0902]

GO ecosystem provides gomobile, a toolchain, that helps incompiling GO code for mobile clients without rewritting whole logic in swist(for ios) or java(for android). It generates a ".aar" (android archive file, for android) which can run on mobile clients. In short it wraps the GO code into client's compatible language(eg to java classes for android) and helps run GO code on the device.

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Prerequisites

• Go 1.16+ installed

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🔧 Installation

Install the gomobile and gobind tools:

go install golang.org/x/mobile/cmd/gomobile@latest
go install golang.org/x/mobile/cmd/gobind@latest

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Initialise the gomobile

gomobile init

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Usage

gomobile bind -target=android <your-package-name>

This generates a .aar file to which can be used on your andorid sdk (for andorid)

gomobile bind -target=ios <your-package-name>

This generates a .framework file to which can be used on your Xcode(for ios development)