makyfj/electron-trpc

Build type-safe Electron inter-process communication using tRPC

electron-trpc

Build IPC for Electron with tRPC

• Expose APIs from Electron's main process to one or more render processes.
• Build fully type-safe IPC.
• Secure alternative to opening servers on localhost.
• Full support for queries, mutations, and subscriptions.

Installation

# Using pnpm
pnpm add electron-trpc

# Using yarn
yarn add electron-trpc

# Using npm
npm install --save electron-trpc

Basic Setup

1. Add your tRPC router to the Electron main process using createIPCHandler:

   import { app } from 'electron';
   import { createIPCHandler } from 'electron-trpc/main';
   import { router } from './api';
   
   app.on('ready', () => {
     const win = new BrowserWindow({
       webPreferences: {
         // Replace this path with the path to your preload file (see next step)
         preload: 'path/to/preload.js',
       },
     });
   
     createIPCHandler({ router, windows: [win] });
   });

2. Expose the IPC to the render process from the preload file:

   import { exposeElectronTRPC } from 'electron-trpc/main';
   
   process.once('loaded', async () => {
     exposeElectronTRPC();
   });

   Note: electron-trpc depends on contextIsolation being enabled, which is the default.

3. When creating the client in the render process, use the ipcLink (instead of the HTTP or batch HTTP links):

   import { createTRPCProxyClient } from '@trpc/client';
   import { ipcLink } from 'electron-trpc/renderer';
   
   export const client = createTRPCProxyClient({
     links: [ipcLink()],
   });

4. Now you can use the client in your render process as you normally would (e.g. using @trpc/react).