Polyonic

The ultimate "Universal Web App"

Now using Ionic 5, Electron 11 and Angular 11 🎉. See here for Ionic 1 and Ionic 3.

Build once using web technologies and deploy everywhere!

Polyonic is an Electron Ionic application shell for creating Web Apps, Progressive Mobile Web Apps, Native Mobile Apps and Desktop Apps.

This project combines the Electron Framework with the Ionic Framework and provides a starter for building out an app that can run on either the desktop (macOS, Windows and Linux), a browser or mobile devices (iOS and Android). You can use this application to build and run on one or all of these platforms.

Motivation

When working in small teams creating web and mobile applications, it is difficult and time consuming for new team members to pick up the different technologies for each platform. I have also been asked a few questions that motivated me to try Polyonic out:

Is there a way to run this mobile app on the desktop?
Can we cache more in the browser for offline working?
Can we have one Universal app that can run on the desktop, mobile, web and Office 365?

These questions made me think about the limitations of the browser for off-line editing and caching and was there a way to create a package that can be used to flesh out any app we require, whilst reducing the overhead of having to learn numerous libraries and frameworks for each platform.

And that is why I decided to try combining Electron and Ionic. Is it wise to have a universal app using a mobile framework? Probably not, but it is fun 😉

Quick start

The dependencies for this project are Node.js, Ionic Framework and Cordova.

You will need the latest Node 14 LTS and NPM 7 installed.

Make sure you have node installed and running, then install Ionic and Cordova globally using npm.

npm install -g ionic@latest cordova@latest

Clone the repo, change into the Polyonic directory, install the npm packages and run the Electron app

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/paulsutherland/Polyonic
cd Polyonic

npm install
npm run electron:dev

You now have Electron and Ionic running as a Desktop app.

Running live reload for development

When developing, you will want to have the app live reload as you save your changes.

Desktop

npm run electron:dev

For debugging the main process you will need to have the Chrome Browser installed.

npm run electron:dev:debug

Open Chrome and navigate to chrome://inspect/ and select the Electron remote target that is available to attach the debugger to.

If you require live reloading of the main process debugging session, then it is recommended that you install the Chrome plugin Node.js V8 --inspector Manager (NiM). In the plugin settings, set the host to localhost, the port to 9229 and the app to auto. This will allow you to live reload changes made to the main process (electron.js file).

npm run electron:dev:debug-live

iOS

Emulator

npm run emulate:ios-dev

Device

npm run device:ios-dev

Android

Emulator

npm run emulate:android-dev

Device

npm run device:android-dev

Building on Windows

For building on Windows you will need to install the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System.

You can download NSIS here

You will need to make sure the NSIS path is added as an environment variable:

setx PATH "%PATH%;C:\Program Files (x86)\NSIS"

Or using point and click.

Porting existing Ionic Apps

It is possible to port your existing apps to run on the desktop, but you may need to make some platform adjustments to call out to an equivalent api for any mobile plugins your app uses. The app includes and angular service for electron which makes is easy to call the Electron APIs from within the Ionic components.

For example you may want to check what platform you are running on before you make an api call, either calling out to an Ionic plugin, an Electron api or a browser api.

The data service component data.service.ts has an example of setting up a PouchDB database depending upon what platform the app is running on.

import { ElectronService } from './electron.service'
import { Platform } from '@ionic/angular'

...

constructor(public electron: ElectronService, private platform: Platform) {}

...

public setup() {
    const ctx = this
    console.log('Setting up the application database')

    if (ctx.electron.isElectronApp) {
      return ctx.desktopDB()
    }
    if (ctx.platform.is('mobile')) {
      return ctx.mobileDB()
    } else {
      return ctx.webDB()
    }
}

Encryption at rest

If your app requires your data to be encrypted at rest, the app includes an example of using the cordova-sqlcipher-adapter plugin for Ionic and the polyonic-secure-pouch plugin for the desktop and browser.

The Cordova example encrypts the local sqlite database, whereas the secure pouch plugin encrypts and decrypts your data when it is saved or fetched from the browser database. Either way, at rest, your data is encrypted.

You will need to include a key or password/secret from the user, or an api app, to encrypt the data. You can store this key in Ionic Secure Storage or for the desktop you can use Keytar.

NPM Script Commands

Platform/Commands
Desktop
`npm run electron:dev`	For development using live reload and opens with developer tools
`npm run electron:local`	Build and run on the desktop, no livereload or developer tools
`npm run electron:linux`	Production build for linux platform. (Requires Linux)
`npm run electron:mac`	Production build for macOS. (Requires macOS)
`npm run electron:windows`	Production build for Windows. (Requires Windows)
iOS
`npm run emulate:ios-dev`	For iOS development on the simulator using live reload
`npm run emulate:ios`	For iOS development on the simulator
`npm run device:ios-dev`	For iOS development on an iOS device using live reload
`npm run device:ios`	For iOS development on an iOS device
`npm run release:ios`	Production build for iOS. (Requires XCode on macOS)
Android
`npm run emulate:android-dev`	For Android development on an emulator using live reload
`npm run emulate:android`	For Android development on an emulator
`npm run device:android-dev`	For Android development on an Android device using live reload
`npm run device:android`	For Android development on an Android device
Web Apps and PWA Apps
`npm run ionic`	For web and progressive web app development using live reload

Publishing your apps

How to publish an Android App

How to publish an iOS App

How to publish a macOS and/or Windows App

How to publish a progressive web app

Credits

This application was built using the Electron Framework ❤️ for creating desktop apps and Ionic Framework ❤️ for the UI and creating Native Mobile Applications, Progressive Mobile Web Applications and Web Applications.

The app was inspired by:

Angular Electron Shell 👊

Simple Cryptor Pouch Plugin (forked to create the polyonic-secure-pouch plugin). 🙏

Polyonic for Enterprise

This project is a generic shell/seed project that lets you build your app for multiple platforms. For Enterprise use, including:

Azure AD multi-tenancy Integration
Office 365 apps
Realtime CouchDB integration
End to end encryption
Support services
WebXR
WebRTC

You can contact us at polyonic.com 🤘

License

Released under the MIT license.