Hybrid App Development without Angular or React

Question

I am completely new to the concept of Hybrid App Development. I have developed a website without any framework like Angular or React, just core coding. Now I want to develop a Hybrid App from this.

But I have some questions running in my mind and could not find answers anywhere so thought of asking this community of Geniuses.

1) Is it necessary to use any framework like Angular or React or Vue for the development of a Hybrid App? Or can we simply develop a Hybrid app without such frameworks?

2) Is MVC architecture important for the development of Hybrid App or we can convert any website into a Hybrid app having no MVC architecture?

3) once a Hybrid app is made, what code would it be having inside the app wrapper? Will it be my HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc or it would have converted all my code into Java for Android? I mean what if anyone tries to reverse engineer my apk? What code will he have?

4) What about security? I mean I will be using database connections, settings, configurations and other security codes which should not be accessible to anyone who tries to reverse engineer my app?

5) What happens when I update my website on HTML and PHP? Will I have to recompile my Hybrid app to have new features of my website?

6) Will Hybrid App also have my PHP code at server side? I mean I have a website developed with PHP, so what is it gonna do for dynamic PHP codes?

I hope these questions make sense for anyone new to Hybrid App development. Thanking you in anticipation. Any support would be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Here are my 2 cents

1. No you do not. You could do in in plain html/js, and then use Cordova for instance to package the app. But I think it's much easier if you use a framework if you have to rewrite the app from scratch (wich I think will be your case, since you seem to only have a classic PHP website).

2. You can convert any JS/HTML SPA website to a hybrid app, it does not need to be MVC. But you cannot if your site is built with PHP

3. If you use a hybrid app, it will use the device's webview to display a 'local' JS/html based website. I don't know what you would see with reverse engineering, but potentially your whole website. But anyway it'd be the same for a classic desktop SPA website.

4. All DB connections and secure configurations should be kept server side, and you use an API to access your data.

5. You cannot build a hybrid app using PHP. Hybrid apps use webviews to display the content, which are kind of simplified browsers. So they can only work with local html, js and css files.

6. The hybrid app itself is meant to be only html/css/js files. If you use PHP, it should only be for the server side API, not for rendering views.