Stef Joosten stefjoosten

Deploying the frontend of an Ampersand application as a mobile app

Research report accompanying the feature request in AmpersandTarski/Ampersand. Date: 2026-08-13. Codebase facts verified against AmpersandTarski/prototype-framework at commit 0438d0a4 (v2.6.0 line, Angular 17 frontend, PHP 8.3 backend). External facts carry source links; the state of the art is as of mid-2026.

1. Question and scope

What does it take to deploy the frontend of an Ampersand-generated application on an iPhone and an Android phone as an app, with the app talking over the public internet to the backend API?

Today the prototype framework produces one artifact: a Docker image in which Apache serves the Angular bundle and the PHP API from the same document root, on the same origin. This report examines (a) which assumptions in the current framework tie the frontend to that single origin, (b) which packaging routes exist for putting the Angular frontend on a phone, and (c) which changes each route requires in the framewor

	/* Show duplication.ajs
	* Situation: Archi can make an element show up in different views. The relationships to and from that element in all these views are attached to the same element.
	* Problem: If I accidentally make a copy of an element (e.g. by copying a view from one model to another), multiple elements may arise that have the same type and name.
	* Such copies do not share relations, which violates an important benefit of Archi.
	* Solution: This Archi-script signals the situation, so you can fix it if you want.
	* (c) 2020 by Stef Joosten
	*/

	var debug = true;
	debug ? console.show():true;

 /* Merge all equal name-type elements.ajs
  * Situation: Archi can make an element show up in different views. The relationships to and from that element in all these views are attached to the same element.
  * Problem: If I accidentally make a copy of an element (e.g. by copying a view from one model to another), multiple elements may arise that have the same type and name.
  *          Such copies do not share relations, which violates an important benefit of Archi.
  * Solution: This Archi-script ensures that all elements that share type and name are one and the same element. This will not affect any of your views. Executing this script is idempotent.
  * Impact: after running this script
  *    - you will see that double occurrences in your elements list (in the "Models"-pane of Archi) are gone;
  *    - the information of all double occurrences has been accumulated in the remaining one without losing any information;
  *    - you will also see that the properties of the merged elements are all included in the re