For an art project, I'd like to have multiple distributed devices that can output sound. Firefox OS devices seem optimal. They bring the necessary hardware and I know HTML and JS very well. But I also need a control web server.
From my understanding, a Firefox OS device can act as an WiFi access point ("Share Internet"). However, it cannot act as a small web server for other devices that join the network – without any internet connection. The APIs for native apps seem just not to be powerful enough.
But maybe I am mistaken (I would like to be). So, is a Firefox OS device able to run as a small web server?
httpd.js did not work out-of-the-box for me. But it brought me on the right track. I then found this and after a little bit of tweaking and updating of the code, I got a super-simple server solution.
function startListen(){
console.log("Initializing server");
var socketServer = navigator.mozTCPSocket.listen(8080);
socketServer.onconnect = function(conn){
console.log("connected", conn, conn.ondata);
conn.ondata = function(ev){
console.log("Got request: ", ev);
conn.send("Ok. Got client on port " + conn.port);
conn.close();
};
conn.onclose = function(ev){
console.log("Client left:", ev);
}
};
socketServer.onerror = function(ev){
console.log("Failed to start: ", ev);
};
}
startListen();
The tcp-socket permission is needed.
With this code, I was able to start this in the Firefox OS simulator, direct my browser to open http://localhost:8080 and get an answer and logs in the console.
PS. This also works on a real device. Unfortunately, a separate access point is needed. While Firefox OS can work as a hotspot itself, it can neither be client or server in that mode (outgoing connections are not routed properly and incoming connections are refused).