What is the equivalent Android framework for Swift's Network and NetService APIs?

[Ambigavathid]

Hi everyone 👋,

I'm building a cross-platform app using Skip.tools and I'm using NetService and NetServiceBrowser from Swift's Network/Foundation frameworks for local network (Bonjour/mDNS) printer discovery on iOS.

I want to implement the same discovery functionality on Android.
What is the correct Android equivalent to Swift's Network APIs — especially for mDNS service discovery?

Also:

Is NsdManager the right Android API for this?

Any known best practices or plugin integration tips when bridging this via Skip?

Thanks in advance!

[marcprux]

I'm not an expert in mDNS, but it does sound like Android's NsdManager/NsdServiceInfo are the rough equivalents to the iOS (now-deprecated) NetServiceBrowser/NetService types, or the more modern NSBrowser/NWEndpoint types.

In general when creating feature parity between Android and iOS for features like this, there are three avenues you can take:

1. Just doing it all manually inside #if SKIP blocks directly in your app. This is sometimes the most expedient for prototyping and experimentation.
2. Make a new compatibility framework which takes the iOS API and tries to map it directly onto the equivalent Android functionality, so the iOS code can directly use the NSBrowser API and your Skip implementation will transparently turn those API calls into the calls to NsdManager. This is what we do with our SkipAV framework, but it can only be accomplished if the Android and iOS types are very close in functionality.
3. Make a new wrapper framework that presents your own API on top of underlying implementations that use NetServiceBrowser or NSBrowser on iOS and NsdManager on Android. This affords the most flexibility, and is probably the approach I would favor for this case.

This would make a great community ecosystem contribution, so if you were interested in sketching out ideas for this, I bet other Skip developers would find it useful!

[Ambigavathid]

Hi,

I'm an iOS developer working on printer discovery over local Wi-Fi using mDNS (_ipp._tcp. for AirPrint-compatible printers).

From earlier feedback, I see three possible approaches:

• Use #if os(iOS) / #if os(Android) blocks for prototyping
• Create a compatibility layer that mimics iOS APIs (e.g., SkipDiscoveryService)
• Build a clean wrapper with platform-specific logic underneath (most flexible)

Questions:

• Has anyone built a shared mDNS discovery abstraction in Skip?

• What’s the best way to expose Android’s NsdManager to Swift?

• For option 3, would you prefer:

  • A Swift protocol like:

    protocol PrinterDiscovery {
        func start()
        func stop()
        var onFound: (Printer) -> Void { get set }
    }

    with native wrappers per platform?

  • Or a shared Swift class calling native code via JNI or Skip bindings?

Goal:

• Discover all _ipp._tcp. printers
• Work on both iOS and Android
• Integrate easily with Swift UI in a Skip project

Any suggestions, code examples, or design patterns would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!