Building and Deploying WebAssembly Apps: Building secure, portable, and optimized web applications with WebAssembly

WebAssembly is a groundbreaking technology that has transformed the way we build and deploy web applications. It enables lightning-fast performance, portability across platforms, and seamless integration with existing web technologies. This comprehensive guide will lead you through the journey of mastering WebAssembly, from its fundamentals to advanced applications.

This book introduces WebAssembly basics, its purpose, and real-world use cases in web, server, and desktop apps. Featuring examples in languages like AssemblyScript, C/C++, and Rust, it covers converting legacy codebases to WebAssembly for browser compatibility. It showcases advanced use cases like WebAssembly-based music tools, Git integration, and smart contracts. The book concludes with WebAssembly’s role in cloud-native Kubernetes, signaling a new era in container orchestration. Many of the examples build on the author’s experience with WebAssembly Music, git in WebAssembly, and NEAR protocol smart contracts. These examples serve as real-world use cases, more than just a basic introduction to the technology.

By the end of this book, you will have gained the knowledge and skills to confidently build, deploy, and optimize high-performance WebAssembly applications across a wide range of platforms and use cases.

Key Features

● WebAssembly fundamentals with its purpose, core concepts, and how it powers modern applications across browsers, cloud, blockchain, and desktop environments.

● Learn to compile C/C++, Rust, and AssemblyScript to WebAssembly, with tips on choosing the right language for your needs.

● Explore real-world examples, from sound and music apps to working with low-level WebAssembly code for optimized solutions.

What you will learn

● Understand the basics, purpose, and opportunities it unlocks.

● WebAssembly code fundamentals with low-level binary code through the WebAssembly Text Format.

● Discover how to compile languages like AssemblyScript, C/C++, and Rust into WebAssembly.

● Explore porting older C/C++ codebases into WebAssembly for modern applications.

● Learn about WebAssembly for sound, music, smart contracts, and Kubernetes container orchestration.

Who this book is for

The target audience for this book is developers interested in learning about WebAssembly. The reader should have experience in programming, and knowing about programming languages such as C/C++ or Rust helps in understanding the content.

Table of Contents

1. Exploring the Possibilities with WebAssembly

2. WebAssembly from Scratch

3. Fast WebAssembly and In-browser Compilation with AssemblyScript

4. Optimizing WebAssembly for Performance and Size

5. Emscripten: Bringing C and C++ to the Web

6. Porting libgit2 to WebAssembly

7. Writing Rust Code for WebAssembly

8. Creating a Secure JavaScript Runtime Inside WebAssembly

9. Compiling WebAssembly to C

10. Writing Asynchronous WebAssembly Code

11. WebAssembly Runtimes and WASI

12. WebAssembly Smart Contracts on NEAR Protocol Blockchain

13. WebAssembly on Kubernetes