Separate web apps for HTTP client and API or a single app?

Targets Web
1

I have a small desktop utility app in Xojo which our customers use to extract data from legacy systems and upload that data using web services to our (non-Xojo) platform. We want to collect some additional stats and monitor these client apps a little more closely and, rather than get our web services team to create new services, I decided to embark on my first Xojo web app. I have a placeholder app deployed on an AWS Lightsail server behind nginx and it’s listening on port 8080. So far, so good.

Here’s my question: do I use this single web app to act as both the API endpoint (via HandleSpecialURL) to receive the data from the desktop app and, at the same time, function as the web dashboard front-end serving up HTTP pages? Or would it be better practice to have two separate web apps - one acting as the web services/API with a separate one to serve up web pages in HTTP even though they both will connect to the same database? We expect under 100 sessions at any one time.

2

I have been asking myself the same question. Hope one of the gurus provides his/her input on this.

3

All depends on what you do in the web service. If it is simply a request and deliver situation that takes a few hundred milliseconds, it should not have much of an impact on your web pages.

Since you need both to connect to the database, it is way simpler to have everything in the same app.