ee006a961b
Summary: Restyle of page, including changes to spelling, grammar, links, and structure (where relevant). This diff includes a new version of the image 'flipper-communication-diagram.png'. The old version has been renamed to 'flipper-communication-diagram.bak' Reviewed By: aigoncharov Differential Revision: D36628993 fbshipit-source-id: cb59785777926b4fb8b8bb3be2aa2439d3a580d0
30 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
30 lines
1.8 KiB
Plaintext
---
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id: arch
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title: Architecture
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---
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import useBaseUrl from '@docusaurus/useBaseUrl';
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Flipper is built to be a universal pluggable platform for development tools. Currently, Flipper focuses on Android and iOS development, but its design does not limit it to these platforms. Another way to think of Flipper is a more general-purpose implementation of Chrome DevTools.
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### Overview
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Flipper consists of a desktop interface built with JavaScript on top of Electron so that it can be packaged to run on any operating system.
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This desktop app connects over a [TCP connection](establishing-a-connection.mdx) to applications running on simulators and connected devices. An application running on a device or simulator is called a 'client'.
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The connection is bi-directional, allowing the desktop to query information from the client as well allowing the client to push updates directly to the desktop.
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By querying data and responding to pushing from the client, a Flipper plugin is able to visualize data, debug problems, and change the behavior of running applications. Flipper provides the platform to build these tools and does not limit what kind of tools that may be.
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There are two types of plugins in Flipper:
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* **Client plugins** - expose information as an API to desktop plugins whose responsibility it is to render this information in an easy-to-digest way. Client plugins are written once for each platform in the platform's native language.
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* **Desktop plugins** - written only once in JavaScript using React and consume the APIs exposed by the client plugins.
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### Architecture - React Native
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The following diagram shows a simplified visualization of the Flipper architecture when used with React Native.
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<img alt="Flipper communication diagram" src={useBaseUrl("img/flipper-communication-diagram.png")} />
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