Webview

Requires feature: webview

Nightshade can embed web views inside the application window, enabling hybrid native/web UIs. The system provides bidirectional communication between the engine (host) and web content (client) using typed commands and events.

Feature Flag

[dependencies]
nightshade = { version = "...", features = ["webview"] }

This pulls in wry (Tauri's webview library) and tiny_http on desktop, and wasm-bindgen/web-sys on WASM.

Architecture

The webview system uses a generic WebviewContext<Cmd, Evt> where:

• Cmd — command type sent from the web client to the engine
• Evt — event type sent from the engine to the web client

Both types must implement serde::Serialize and serde::Deserialize. Messages are serialized with postcard (compact binary format) and encoded as base64 for transport.

Host Side (Desktop)

Serving Web Content

Embed static web assets and serve them via a local HTTP server:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
serve_embedded_dir(embedded_assets, port);
}

Creating the Webview

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
let webview_context: WebviewContext<MyCommand, MyEvent> = WebviewContext::new();
webview_context.ensure_webview(bounds, window_handle);
}

The webview is positioned within the application window at the specified bounds.

Sending Events to the Client

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
webview_context.send_event(MyEvent::ScoreUpdated(42));
}

Receiving Commands from the Client

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
for command in webview_context.drain_commands() {
    match command {
        MyCommand::StartGame => { /* ... */ }
        MyCommand::SetOption(key, value) => { /* ... */ }
    }
}
}

Client Side (WASM)

The web content runs as a standard web page that communicates with the engine through IPC.

Connecting

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
connect::<MyCommand, MyEvent>(|event| {
    match event {
        MyEvent::ScoreUpdated(score) => { /* update UI */ }
    }
});
}

Sending Commands

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
send(MyCommand::StartGame);
}

Transport

Communication uses the __nwv__ IPC handler:

Messages are serialized as: postcard binary → base64 string.

Platform Support