Concept
I wondered if it is possible or useful to have a web server on my iPad.
Generally speaking you can only run Apple approved apps on an iPad. There are thousands of them, so the purpose of a server should not duplicate any of them.
There are only a few web server apps available on the App store and the only one which looks reasonable is "WorldWideWeb - Mobile"
Trial
I installed the app. I also installed a simple text editor so that I can create web pages. I then setup a folder "www", created a simple index.html and started the server. The app includes a browser so I could look at my page locally. As www-m supports Bonjour it gave me a URL http://john-ipad5.local:8080 which allows me to access the page externally.
So the answer is yes! I can easily setup a functional website for my iPad.
Uses
I could set up a simple web page to determine which web sites are available. If there is no wifi access this will be empty but it is better than a page not found error message. At home or with VPN enabled my local sites will be seen. On the internet my "official" web site will be available.
By default www-m is "sandboxed" and doesn't give you access to any local resources. It should be possible to give myself access to my music folders. I would like the ability to sync iPad music with (some of) those on my home music server. This would give me a "mobile" music server. It would be also be possible to make this accessible to other people nearby using the web interface.
There seem to be more web servers for Android so it may be better to experiment with such an app on my phone, providing I dont have to edit files directly using the phone keyboard. A suitable candidate is
simple web server . This would be excellent for the "car phone" - which is an old Samsung smartphone containing music for car listening, since the new car has no CD player.
simple web server . This would be excellent for the "car phone" - which is an old Samsung smartphone containing music for car listening, since the new car has no CD player.
Alternatives
It also occured to me that, if I want some sort of programming capability on the iPad, python would be a good candidate. The principal Apple app is Pythonista. It appears to have plenty of libraries allowing access to iPad hardware / features. One downside is that it isn't straightforward to set up a home screen icon for python apps, but it probably is possible using PWA (Progressive Web Apps). These run in a browser for you. An excellent example is the Rubik cube which looks like an app but runs without installation.
Conclusion
I like these ideas, I don't have a strong enough urge to set it up now but maybe sometime ....
