This book guides readers through building desktop applications that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms using the GitHub Electron framework. The book describes how to use your existing web development skills to build a cross-platform desktop application using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Electron is one of the most popular frameworks for creating cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript and Node.js. It’s built on top of the Google's chromium project. Nowadays, it’s getting more popular and companies and developers are using it for their production applications.
In this book, we’ll talk through everything from installing tools, writing the application, and using various third-party tools and frameworks along with Electron.
Chapter 1, Introducing Electron, gives a basic overview about Electron and explains the internals of the Electron. Here, we will be seeing how Electron works and the architecture of the Electron.
Chapter 2, Building Your First Electron Application, discusses the step-by-step guide to develop an Electron application. It covers the steps to create a simple application from environmental setup to running the application.
Chapter 3, Tooling and Debugging, is all about tooling and debugging the application. It gives a detailed idea about debugging the application using various tools and IDEs that are available today.
Chapter 4, Using Angular 2 with Electron, explains using Angular 2 and TypeScript for creating the user interface for Electron application. The chapter will also discuss some other new technologies that are trending today. It will provide you with a detailed idea about using modern frontend frameworks and technologies with your Electron application.
Chapter 5, Crafting User Interface, showcases creating user interfaces for Electron applications. We will be covering various UI frameworks and some of the Electron-based UI frameworks, such as Photon, in this chapter. The chapter will be also covering how to use the popular React framework to craft your user interface for an Electron application.
Chapter 6, Using Node.js with Electron, teaches you how to use the Node.js context that is available inside the Electron in your project. This will be providing you with a complete guide to use the Node.js APIs inside an Electron application.
Chapter 7, Deep Dive into Electron API - 1, gives a detailed idea about various Electron APIs. We will be covering Electron APIs such as Clipboard, Process, Shell, Image, File, Dialog, Accelerator, and Session. This chapter will also cover some advanced topics, such as request intercepting and custom protocol implementation.
Chapter 8, Exploring Electron API – 2, continues exploring various Electron APIs. This will cover some of the advanced features, such as webContents API, which is used to control the rendering process, possible Chrome command-line switches, and the download API, among other things.
Chapter 9, Integrating with Desktop Environments, shows that different operating systems provide different features for integrating desktop applications into their desktop environments. This chapter explains how to integrate our application into those desktop environments with Electron APIs.
Chapter 10, Dealing with Web Standards, focuses on how various web standards can be integrated with Electron. This will cover topics such as caching network resources using a service worker, using local storage, and persisting data using IndexedDB.
Chapter 11, Testing Electron Application, informs that testing is an important aspect of the software application development process. This chapter covers testing your Electron application. The chapter also covers how to use popular JavaScript testing frameworks and, also, how to use those frameworks inside the Electron application.
Chapter 12, Packaging and Distributing the Application, explains how to package the application for final production. We will cover various libraries to package and distribute our application. This section will describe how to move to native packaging for each platform, how to enable autoupdating for the application in case of new changes, creating ASAR packages, creating installers for each platform, and guidelines to submit to various stores.
- A text editor to edit and create HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files; you can use your preferred editor.
- Node.js should be installed in your system, at least 4.x or later version should be installed. It is preferable to have at least 6.x and later version.
- A package manager such as npm or yarn; npm will be installed by default when you install Node.js.
- (Optional) Git client should be installed on your computer if you would like to check out the recipe source code directly from our Git repository.
If you are a developer familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and you wish to develop a desktop application using these technologies, then this book is for you. This book is also targeting experienced JavaScript developers with a basic understanding of frontend development and Node.js development. This book is also suitable for frontend/web developers who want to develop a desktop application using the same technologies they are using for web development.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Electron then loads the HTML page using the loadurl function."
A block of code is set as follows:
{
"name" : "your-app",
"version" : "0.1.0",
"main" : "main.js"
}Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_7.x | sudo -E bash - sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text surrounded by quotes, or like this: "Just hit the Download button and click OK."
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