I see the APIs are quite extensive but before I dive into this direction, I wanted to know if it is possible to build a custom flutter app entirely using the APIs that discourse supports? We are currently on xenforo and would be migrating to discourse first and then start working on the custom app user experience. Anything else to we wary of?

Yes, it’s totally possible, as discourse is just an ember app on top of the rails api. I think it’s a terrible idea, as you’ll just be duplicating thousands of hours of work. That said, I had a client who did just that and they seemed happy with it. I haven’t heard from them in a long while; I don’t know why. The good thing about the approach is that at any point you could just decide to switch to the discourse front end. Edit: Or, perhaps, use discourse after the migration and then never get your app good enough to warrant moving to it, or allow users to choose which front end they prefer.

Are you intending to use a web view? If not: potentially massive amounts of duplication of front end work inc. ongoing duplication of maintenance incompatibility with the theme component and plugin ecosystem so inability to leverage it.

[image] Flutter Mobile App for your Discourse Community Development Hey everyone, I’ve been working on a Flutter mobile app for my discourse community for the past 3-4 months. Was wondering if anyone else is interested in using Flutter to build a mobile application for their Discourse Community. Ask me any questions below. slight_smile

Hi Robert, Nope not planning on using the web view. That would defeat the purpose of a custom user experience. Duplication of work is a given and acceptable. What do you mean by incompatibility with the theme component and plugin ecosystem? Do you mean that plugins will not expose the APIs so therefore cannot be used on the custom mobile app. Theme component is specific to the front end framework so understandably ember components cannot be used on flutter.

I read that thread before posting this here. That thread went down the PWA vs native debate and the original poster never returned. My query is not specifically about flutter anyway even though I have mentioned it in the title. The query actually is, since there is an extensive list of APIs exposed, is it possible to create a fully functional custom front end using those. Or are there some gaps which would not allow us to do so.

[image] SubStrider: What do you mean by incompatibility with the theme component and plugin ecosystem? The front end elements of these (Theme Components are 100% front end) are written in EmberJS and use the JavaScript API of Discourse You will almost certainly cut yourself off from all those customisations. [image] SubStrider: Do you mean that plugins will not expose the APIs so therefore cannot be used on the custom mobile app No, but pretty useless without the front end changes. See my post: [image] Flutter Mobile App for your Discourse Community Development But there is? Whitelisted Discourse app with Push Notifications via OneSignal (good solution as uses Web View allowing most plugins and theme components to work but needs yearly maintenance) The official ‎Discourse Hub App - App Store and android equivalent https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.discourse Lexicon: a customizable native mobile app for your Discourse site But: Discourse is already a PWA so the benefits are minimal? Once Apple chooses to fix its support for web n… (The Topic is linked above) Basically great fun for a project I’m sure but totally doesn’t make any economic nor much technical sense. If you want to deploy on app stores there is a much better option

Thanks Jay, your answer really is what I was looking for. In fact I could use the discourse front end for my power users and build a minimalist mobile app for attracting the casual users who would want to engage without getting overwhelmed. You know the ones who like using reddit and facebook. Oh man I have come back to discourse after years and the evolution here is beyond amazing. Very excited. My community has 75K members and 2.5 million posts so it would take some work to get migrated. That is my first goal as of now.

[image] SubStrider: You know the ones who like using reddit and facebook. We do have some themes to play around with which may be less of a timesink than “build a Discourse frontend in flutter from scratch” [image] A reddit-ish theme for Discourse Theme [Screenshot 2023-06-23 at 5.20.23 PM] information_source Summary A Discourse theme that looks a little like reddit hammer_and_wrench Repository github.com/discourse/discourse-redditish-theme question Install Guide How to install a theme or theme component open_book New to Discourse Themes? Beginner’s guide to using Discourse Themes warning This is still a work in progress and not all features are supported yet (bulk topic select for example), but it’s usable as-i… [image] FKB Pro - Social theme Theme FKB Pro is a highly modified, detailed, professional social theme, but still user-friendly. rocket warning This theme is quite sensitive and maybe not well compatible with other theme components or plugins you use! Please test it before use. These usually need some css modification. If you have any issue please report and will fix it. Layout On desktop: Three column layout. [Screenshot 2023-01-02 at 19.53.05] Sidebar ready [Screenshot 2023-01-02 at 19.51.55] On mobile: [Scre… You may install these themes to your site and users can select them for themselves.

I’d like to be proven wrong with an actual example of an independent frontend. I’d also like to be corrected if anything I state here is not accurate! :hugs: Just in my understanding there’s actually a misjudgement whenever this topic comes up, in the sense of: Discourse has an API and an independent frontend layer, so why not just try a different frontend there? The misjudgement I see is that simply by scale, the amount of actual interface elements and views is not properly appreciated. There’s not only topic list and topic view, but a lot more that seem secondary at first, but you’d need to design anyways. Just looking at the user pages, you’d either need to replicate all the different views or work out an alternative structure. more conceptually, the frontend of Discourse is not just presentational, but a highly functional layer. All the read tracking is based on Ember and without it, many of the sophisticated features of Discourse will not be working. If you don’t replicate the user tracking in your frontend and painstakingly hook it up with the backend, you’d need to drop trust levels, badges, nudges, read states, .. and what you have is a pretty bare app that allows users to read, post and like. It’s probably much easier to build such a simple app on a simple foundation, rather than on Discourse.

Thank you, thats probably something I would have discovered as I would have dug deeper. Its a shame then if all the statistics are being triggered and computed in the front end instead of say using queues in the backend. Nowhere near headless then.

Thanks Natalie, I did look at the themes earlier and would say that FKB Pro is closer to what we would want. See this concept UI for the mobile app. [A screenshot of a social media platform showing posts about gaming, architecture, and travel with a background image of a person sitting in the back of a vehicle at sunset. (Captioned by AI)]

Can discourse be used entirely through the APIs to build a flutter app?

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Moin December 15, 2024, 7:16pm 3

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Can discourse be used entirely through the APIs to build a flutter app?

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