The Last APK: Retiring Android SDK Development for Institutional Software Using Python-Django, HTMX, and a WebView Bridge
Rahul Patel

TL;DR
This paper demonstrates that a campus management system built with Python-Django and HTMX can replace native Android SDK development, reducing costs, payload, and development time while maintaining user satisfaction.
Contribution
It introduces a web-based approach for institutional mobile applications that eliminates the need for native Android SDK development, using a Django-HTMX stack.
Findings
Development time reduced by approximately 54%.
HTTP payload decreased by 91% compared to full-page reload.
User satisfaction scored 4.2 out of 5.
Abstract
The assumption that mobile enterprise software requires native Android SDK development has persisted for over a decade, but for institutional deployments, this assumption is not merely outdated: it is economically wasteful and technically unnecessary. This paper presents a campus management system built during an internship at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IIT Gandhinagar), covering housekeeping task scheduling, inventory management, horticulture tracking, worker attendance, multi-stage leave workflows, and client-side photo capture with automatic compression. The core stack uses Python-Django as the backend framework and HTMX for hypermedia-driven, mobile-responsive partial DOM updates, containing zero lines of Android SDK application logic. The entire system runs as a self-hosted Docker Compose deployment with no dependency on any external cloud service. Through…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
