What is the purpose for App URL for on-premise SharePoint?

Question

We are using SP2016 on-premise. Patch is deployed so that I can work with Spfx. I followed this MS document (Configure an environment for apps for SharePoint Server) to configure any App domain ContosoApps.com. Our sharepoint main url is Contoso.com.

After various try and error, we have successfully deployed our Hello World app. We tested the app can be deployed by each subsite and it is working. The source code (2 JS file & 1 json file) are uploaded to https://Contoso.com/sites/source.

I expected somewhere I need to use "app-.ContosoApps.com but none of the steps is involving it. I cannot even find out what is the for my helloworld app. My question is, I don't really need to care ContosoApps.com at all. What is the purpose to set it up?

Answer 1

SharePoint Framework addins do not use the app domain. SharePoint Addins do. You still need to be able to configure an App Catalog/App URL in order to deploy SPFx solutions, though.