Dependencies & Networking

ZKite applications can integrate pure-Python packages from PyPI and perform network communication using standard libraries.

Declaring Dependencies

Declare third-party packages in pyproject.toml under [project].dependencies:

[project]
name = "my-zkite-app"
version = "1.0.0"
dependencies = [
    "requests>=2.31.0",
    "pydantic>=2.0.0"
]

When you run zkite run or zkite build, ZKite automatically resolves and bundles these dependencies into the application’s native runtime environment.

Pure Python vs Compiled C Extensions

ZKite bundles a pre-compiled Android CPython 3.14 runtime.

• Supported: Pure-Python packages (e.g. requests, urllib3, pydantic-core wheels for Android if pure, jinja2, markdown).
• Unsupported: Desktop C-extensions with uncompiled native binaries (e.g. standard desktop numpy or scipy wheels without Android arm64 cross-compilation).

Making Network Requests

Always perform HTTP requests on a background worker thread to prevent freezing the Android UI thread:

import threading
import urllib.request
import json
from zkite import Store

class ApiStore(Store):
    status: str = "Idle"
    weather: str = ""

store = ApiStore()

def fetch_weather_data(city: str):
    store.update(status="Loading...")

    def worker():
        try:
            url = f"https://api.example.com/weather?city={city}"
            req = urllib.request.Request(url, headers={"User-Agent": "ZKiteApp/1.0"})
            with urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=10) as response:
                data = json.loads(response.read().decode("utf-8"))
                store.update(weather=data.get("temp", "N/A"), status="Ready")
        except Exception as err:
            store.update(status=f"Error: {err}")

    threading.Thread(target=worker, daemon=True).start()

Standard Library Pruning (--no-prune-stdlib)

To keep mobile APK sizes minimal, ZKite automatically analyzes your project and prunes unused parts of the Python standard library.

If your project utilizes heavy dynamic reflection or importlib for runtime module loading, use the --no-prune-stdlib flag during builds:

zkite run --no-prune-stdlib
zkite build apk --no-prune-stdlib