Book Image

Building Cross-Platform Desktop Applications with Electron

By : Muhammed Jasim
Book Image

Building Cross-Platform Desktop Applications with Electron

By: Muhammed Jasim

Overview of this book

<p>Though web applications are becoming increasingly popular, desktop apps are still important. The Electron framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, and this book will teach you how to create your first desktop application with Electron. It will guide you on how to build desktop applications that run on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.</p> <p>You will begin your journey with an overview of Electron, and then move on to explore the various stages of creating a simple social media application. Along the way, you will learn how to use advanced Electron APIs, debug an Electron application, and make performance improvements using the Chrome developer tools. You’ll also find out how to package and distribute an application, and more.</p> <p>By the end of the book, you will be able to build a complete desktop application using Electron and web technologies. You will have a solid understanding of the common challenges that desktop app developers face, and you’ll know how to solve them.</p>

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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Title Page
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewer
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Customer Feedback
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Introducing Electron
Introducing Electron
Why desktop applications?
History of Electron
Introducing Electron
Accessing operating system APIs
Building a hello world application using Electron
Summary
2
Building Your First Electron Application
Building Your First Electron Application
Introducing the sample application
Setting up the development environment
Summary
3
Tooling and Debugging
Tooling and Debugging
Debugging an Electron application
Debugging with Visual Studio Code
Summary
4
Using Angular 2 with Electron
Using Angular 2 with Electron
Introducing the Facebook Graph API
Implementing oAuth authentication with Electron
Summary
5
Crafting User Interface
Crafting User Interface
Introducing Photon kit
Building a user interface with React desktop
Summary
6
Using Node.js with Electron
Using Node.js with Electron
Managing data stores
Accessing hardware
Using TypeScript and ES2015 with Electron
Summary
7
Deep Dive into Electron API - 1
Deep Dive into Electron API - 1
Inter-process communication with IPC module
Defining custom protocols
Sessions and cookies
Session
Native system dialogs
Working with clipboard
Managing display and power sleep mode
Monitoring power changes
Networking from the main process
Summary
8
Exploring Electron API - 2
Exploring Electron API - 2
Managing the web page using webContents
Extended Node.js process 
Customizing the browser window
Working with the shell
Controlling the application life cycle using app module
Summary
9
Integrating with Desktop Environments
Integrating with Desktop Environments
Introduction to desktop integration
Managing task list, recent documents, and the dock menu
Thumbnail toolbars
Managing display properties
Dealing with tray icons
Managing application logs
Running Electron application as Windows service
Universal Windows platform
Summary
10
Dealing with Web Standards
Dealing with Web Standards
Service workers
Customizing the notification
Summary
11
Testing Electron Application
Testing Electron Application
Introduction to JavaScript testing
Introduction to Spectron
Using ESNext in test cases
Using Chai as Promised
Summary
12
Packaging and Distributing the Application
Packaging and Distributing the Application
Building and packaging the Electron application
Packaging the Electron into asar archive 
Automating the build process
Summary

Chapter 7. Deep Dive into Electron API - 1

Electron provides a rich set of APIs that leverage us to create a powerful desktop application, which gives us full control over native operating system APIs. We had discussed various aspects of the Electron application development, but we did not get into the details of the Electron APIs. In this chapter and the next chapter, we will be discussing the Electron API in detail. Most of the APIs discussed here should be working well with all major operating systems. Some of the features/APIs are designed specifically for certain platforms; this will be discussed accordingly. We will be checking the following points in detail in this chapter:

  • Inter-process communication with ipcRenderer & ipcMain modules
  • Protocol management and defining custom protocols
  • Managing and accessing the system preferences
  • Networking API
  • Monitoring power state and managing the power
  • Various other minor Electron APIs

The features that we will discuss here are readily available...

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