Book Image

Cross-platform Desktop Application Development: Electron, Node, NW.js, and React

By : Dmitry Sheiko
Book Image

Cross-platform Desktop Application Development: Electron, Node, NW.js, and React

By: Dmitry Sheiko

Overview of this book

Building and maintaining cross-platform desktop applications with native languages isn’t a trivial task. Since it’s hard to simulate on a foreign platform, packaging and distribution can be quite platform-specific and testing cross-platform apps is pretty complicated.In such scenarios, web technologies such as HTML5 and JavaScript can be your lifesaver. HTML5 desktop applications can be distributed across different platforms (Window, MacOS, and Linux) without any modifications to the code. The book starts with a walk-through on building a simple file explorer from scratch powered by NW.JS. So you will practice the most exciting features of bleeding edge CSS and JavaScript. In addition you will learn to use the desktop environment integration API, source code protection, packaging, and auto-updating with NW.JS. As the second application you will build a chat-system example implemented with Electron and React. While developing the chat app, you will get Photonkit. Next, you will create a screen capturer with NW.JS, React, and Redux. Finally, you will examine an RSS-reader built with TypeScript, React, Redux, and Electron. Generic UI components will be reused from the React MDL library. By the end of the book, you will have built four desktop apps. You will have covered everything from planning, designing, and development to the enhancement, testing, and delivery of these apps.

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Table of Contents (9 chapters)
Preface
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Free Chapter
1
Creating a File Explorer with NW.js-Planning, Designing, and Development
Creating a File Explorer with NW.js-Planning, Designing, and Development
The application blueprint
Setting up an NW.js project
Node Package Manager
An HTML prototype
Fulfilling the functional requirements
Handling windowing actions
Writing a service to navigate through directories
Writing view modules
Summary
2
Creating a File Explorer with NW.js – Enhancement and Delivery
Creating a File Explorer with NW.js – Enhancement and Delivery
Internationalization and localization
Context menu
System clipboard
Menu in the system tray
Command-line options
Native look and feel
Source code protection
Packaging
Autoupdate
Summary
3
Creating a Chat System with Electron and React – Planning, Designing, and Development
Creating a Chat System with Electron and React – Planning, Designing, and Development
Application blueprint
Electron
React
Electron meets React
Enabling DevTools extensions
Static prototype
Summary
4
Creating a Chat System with Electron and React – Enhancement, Testing, and Delivery
Creating a Chat System with Electron and React – Enhancement, Testing, and Delivery
Revitalizing the title bar
Utilizing WebSockets
Implementing chat services
Bringing functionality to the components
Writing unit-tests
Packaging and distribution
Deployment and updates
Summary
5
Creating a Screen Capturer with NW.js, React, and Redux – Planning, Design, and Development
Creating a Screen Capturer with NW.js, React, and Redux – Planning, Design, and Development
Application blueprint
Setting up the development environment
Static prototype
Comprehending redux
Introducing the application state
Summary
6
Creating a Screen Capturer with NW.js: Enhancement, Tooling, and Testing
Creating a Screen Capturer with NW.js: Enhancement, Tooling, and Testing
Tooling Redux
Redux DevTools
Unit-testing Redux
Taking a screenshot
Recording a screencast
Taking advantage of the system tray
Registering global keyboard shortcuts
Summary
7
Creating RSS Aggregator with Electron, TypeScript , React, and Redux: Planning, Design, and Development
Creating RSS Aggregator with Electron, TypeScript , React, and Redux: Planning, Design, and Development
Application blueprint
Welcome to TypeScript
Setting up the development environment for TypeScript
Creating static prototype
Summary
8
Creating RSS Aggregator with Electron, TypeScript, React, and Redux: Development
Creating RSS Aggregator with Electron, TypeScript, React, and Redux: Development
Creating a service to fetch RSS
Creating a service to manage feed menu
Actions and Reducers
Connecting to the store
Consuming store from the components
Creating router service
Summary

Deployment and updates

Built-in capacities for auto updates is one of Electron's most prominent advantages over NW.js. Electron's autoUpdater module (http://bit.ly/1KKdNQs) utilizes the Squirrel framework (https://github.com/Squirrel), which makes silent possible. It works nicely in conjunction with the existing solution for multiplatform release servers; in particular, one can run it with Nuts (https://github.com/GitbookIO/nuts) using GitHub as a backend. We can also quickly set up a fully-featured node server based on electron-release-server (https://github.com/ArekSredzki/electron-release-server), which includes release management UI.

Electron-updater doesn't support Linux. The project maintainers recommend using the distribution's package manager to update the application.

For the sake of brevity, we will walk through a simplified autoupdate approach that...

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