- Electron - A framework for building cross-platform desktop apps using HTML, JS, and CSS
- Vite - A fast build tool
- React - A library for building UI
- TypeScript - A typed JavaScript
- CodeMirror 6 - An extensible code editor for the web
- Remark - An extensible Markdown processor
npm i
npm run watch
The structure of this project is very similar to the structure of a monorepo.
The entire source code of the program is divided into three modules (packages) that are bundled each independently:
packages/main
Electron main script.packages/preload
Used inBrowserWindow.webPreferences.preload
. See Checklist: Security Recommendations.packages/renderer
Electron web page.
Packages main
and preload
are built in library mode as it is a simple javascript.
renderer
package build as regular web app.
The build of web resources is performed in the scripts/build.js
. Its analogue is a sequential call to vite build
for each package.
Next step is run packaging and compilation a ready for distribution Electron app for macOS, Windows and Linux with "auto update" support out of the box.
To do this, using the electron-builder:
- In npm script
compile
: This script is configured to compile the application as quickly as possible. It is not ready for distribution, is compiled only for the current platform and is used for debugging. - In GitHub Action: The application is compiled for any platform and ready-to-distribute files are automatically added to the draft GitHub release.
According to Electron's security guidelines, Node.js integration is disabled for remote content. This means that you cannot call any Node.js api in the packages/renderer
directly. To do this, you must describe the interface in the packages/preload
where Node.js api is allowed:
// packages/preload/src/index.ts
import { readFile } from 'fs/promises';
const api = {
readConfig: () => readFile('/path/to/config.json', { encoding: 'utf-8' }),
};
contextBridge.exposeInMainWorld('electron', api);
// packages/renderer/src/App.vue
import { useElectron } from '/@/use/electron';
const { readConfig } = useElectron();
Read more about Security Considerations.
Note: Context isolation disabled for test
environment. See #693.
All environment variables set as part of the import.meta
, so you can access them as follows: import.meta.env
.
You can also build type definitions of your variables by running scripts/buildEnvTypes.js
. This command will create types/env.d.ts
file with describing all environment variables for all modes.
The mode option is used to specify the value of import.meta.env.MODE
and the corresponding environment variables files that needs to be loaded.
By default, there are two modes:
production
is used by defaultdevelopment
is used bynpm run watch
scripttest
is used bynpm test
script
When running building, environment variables are loaded from the following files in your project root:
.env # loaded in all cases
.env.local # loaded in all cases, ignored by git
.env.[mode] # only loaded in specified env mode
.env.[mode].local # only loaded in specified env mode, ignored by git
Note: only variables prefixed with VITE_
are exposed to your code (e.g. VITE_SOME_KEY=123
) and SOME_KEY=123
will not. you can access VITE_SOME_KEY
using import.meta.env.VITE_SOME_KEY
. This is because the .env
files may be used by some users for server-side or build scripts and may contain sensitive information that should not be exposed in code shipped to browsers.
Takuya Matsuyama (@craftzdog)