Building and Deploying WebAssembly Apps

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. 

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

Peter Salomonsen is currently working as an Enterprise Architect at Banqsoft, where his mission is to lift banking and credit software suites into cloud-native architectures and environments. Peter has been an active computer programmer since the Commodore 64 and was active in creating computer music in the Commodore Amiga demoscene. His interest in combining coding and music led to the creation of the open-source music software Frinika, written in Java for portability across platforms. When WebAssembly became a reality, he saw the opportunity to bring music production to the Web browser, and then he created the WebAssembly Music project. Since the 1990s, Peter has also worked as a software architect and developer of web applications for GPS vehicle tracking, digital maps, government services, and finance. He has also been leading the hosting part of these applications, from the era of self-hosted on-premise servers to cloud-native operations on Kubernetes. Improving the scalability, resilience, and energy efficiency of information systems has always been one of Peter’s ambitions, and WebAssembly plays an important part in that evolution. Peter has been shipping WebAssembly applications since asm. js was introduced in 2013. Porting TA-lib to asm.js for a widely used financial markets technical analysis tool was one of his first achievements with the technology. Among the next WebAssembly projects he created are Wasm-Git and WebAssembly Music. To achieve the goals for these projects, Peter also made contributions to the Emscripten and AssemblyScript codebases.

Since 2020, Peter has also been an active contributor to the NEAR protocol blockchain ecosystem. Also started here with the WebAssembly Music project, but later, he also introduced JsInRust to make it possible to add a JavaScript layer inside the WebAssembly smart contracts. The WebAssembly Music project is the main driver for all of the other supporting WebAssembly projects Peter is working on. The project encompasses all layers in a Cloud Native technology stack and also blockchain. WebAssembly can be found in every layer. Peter is a true WebAssembly enthusiast and ambassador.