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Kindaba PWA Bridge

A library to ease communication between a PWA (or any Web application) and a React Native wrapper that hosts it.

This is to help "augment" a Web Application with functionality that is not available for PWAs on certain platforms, like Push notifications or Camera on iOS.

The Web App and the Native Wrapper can communicate through this bridge.

How to use

Install the package in the projects that are using it - both the web application and the React Native Wrapper

npm i --save kindaba/kindaba-pwa-bridge#v0.1

The library provide methods to use from the PWA side, and others to use from the React Native side.

On the React Native side, host the PWA in a Web View

import WKWebView from "react-native-wkwebview-reborn";

import RnBridge from 'kindaba-pwa-bridge'

takePicture = () => {
    // some event handler
}
cameraRoll = () => {
    // some event handler
}
// in the render function
render() {
    <WKWebView
          ref={ref => { this.webview = ref; }}
          onMessage={RnBridge.handleMessages({
            [RnBridge.Event_Camera]: this.takePicture,
            [RnBridge.Event_Camera_Roll]: this.cameraRoll,
          })}
          style={{ flex: 1, height, width, borderWidth: 1 }}
          source={{ uri: "http://localhost:3000/#/" }}
          allowsBackForwardNavigationGestures
        />
}

Pass RnBridge.handleMessage to the onMessage method of the WebView. Pass the method a map of event names and handlers. The event names are just strings, and can be anything and they will be triggered if a matching event is published from the other side (the PWA side). Few events names are provided for convenience (RnBridge.Event_Camera, RnBridge.Event_Camera_Roll and RnBridge.Event_Push_Notification )

Notice the use of react-native-wkwebview-reborn instead of webview. React Native comes with WebView component, which uses UIWebView on iOS. This component uses WKWebView introduced in iOS 8 with all the performance boost.

Methods (PWA > React Native)

These are the functions available to use from the PWA side.

sendToReactNative(eventName, data) - sends a message to React Native publishing an event called eventName with some data

listenToReactNative(callback) - Registers to events coming from React Native. It parses the message sent back into JSON for convenience.

unlistenToReactNative() - to unregister from listening to messages from React Native. Typically add it componentWillUnmount().

isReactNative - Helper method to check if the PWA is loaded inside React Native or just in a web browser

openCameraRoll, openCamera are alias methods for sendToReactNative passing a pre-defined event_name

Methods (React Native > PWA)

These are the functions available to use from the PWA side.

handleMessages(options) - sets up the event handlers on React Native side so that when a PWA posts a message with { event: "event_name" } then the function defined here (the one mapped to "event_name") will be triggered

sendToWebView - sends some data back to the PWA, for example, after photos are selected in a Camera Roll in the native side, those photos can be sent back to the PWA. Or when a push notification is received, then this will forward it to the PWA.

Check the code documentation for up to date list of methods and what they do.