Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WebContainer API

webcontainers.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 54 posts

Re: WebContainer API

#11

Post by nine_k »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #8
brundolf wrote: post #6

HN title is a little editorialized, making it sound like a new browser standard. Should be edited imo The materials themselves also drip with exaggeration and hand-waving, talking about things like "the legacy cloud VM" (emphasis mine), "unmatched security", "spinning up the entire dev environment in milliseconds" All of this is aside from the actual technology, which could be cool, I have no idea yet. But it rubbed…

They are aiming to develop a standard... of sorts... https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core

This sounds pretty reasonable, is easily readable, and I suppose this should be the main URL.

The idea is to use the browser as the dev environment, all of it: emulate a file system, run non-JS tools compiled to WASM on top of it, and access networking via the browser, too. For Node-based development, this sounds rather doable.

Re: WebContainer API

#12

Post by jacooper »

skeoh wrote: post #9

Short of building my own using this API, does a self-hosted Codesandbox/Stackblitz alternative exist? I love the idea of spinning up web containers within my corporate network so I can prototype applications using internal APIs.

Gitpod/codeserver exist. They are basically cloud vscode with server sidr containers.

Re: WebContainer API

#13

Post by vdfs »

nine_k wrote: post #11
scoopertrooper wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are aiming to develop a standard... of sorts... https://github.com/stackblitz/webcontainer-core

This sounds pretty reasonable, is easily readable, and I suppose this should be the main URL. The idea is to use the browser as the dev environment, all of it: emulate a file system, run non-JS tools compiled to WASM on top of it, and access networking via the browser, too. For Node-based development, this sounds rather doable.

It is nice, but not totally free or open source:

"WebContainers rely on hosted proxies and server-side acceleration to enable truly instant development environments. By obtaining a WebContainer API license, your business can gain access to higher API rate limits, uptime reliability, and a range of benefits designed to help you maximize the potential of the WebContainer API in your organization.

Licensing is required for production usage of the API in a for-profit setting (feel free to prototype as much as you like without a license). If you're using the API to meet the needs of your customers, prospective customers, and/or employees you need a license to ensure continued access to the API as you scale.

"

Re: WebContainer API

#14

Post by vdfs »

skeoh wrote: post #9

Short of building my own using this API, does a self-hosted Codesandbox/Stackblitz alternative exist? I love the idea of spinning up web containers within my corporate network so I can prototype applications using internal APIs.

Beware of this (from their enterprise page):

"Licensing is required for production usage of the API in a for-profit setting (feel free to prototype as much as you like without a license). If you're using the API to meet the needs of your customers, prospective customers, and/or employees you need a license to ensure continued access to the API as you scale."

Re: WebContainer API

#15

Post by [deleted] »

pcj-github wrote: post #4

This looks really cool (I love anything with a filesystem API), but I'm unclear on the role of hosted proxies in this setup. Also, the licensing costs aren't clear. "WebContainers rely on hosted proxies and server-side acceleration to enable truly instant development environments. By obtaining a WebContainer API license, your business can gain access to higher API rate limits, uptime reliability, and a range of benef…

[deleted]

Re: WebContainer API

#19

Post by [deleted] »

brundolf wrote: post #6

HN title is a little editorialized, making it sound like a new browser standard. Should be edited imo The materials themselves also drip with exaggeration and hand-waving, talking about things like "the legacy cloud VM" (emphasis mine), "unmatched security", "spinning up the entire dev environment in milliseconds" All of this is aside from the actual technology, which could be cool, I have no idea yet. But it rubbed…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN