Go-WebUI

Features · Installation · Usage · Documentation · WebUI

Use any web browser or WebView as GUI.
With Go in the backend and modern web technologies in the frontend.

Features

Parent library written in pure C
Fully Independent (No need for any third-party runtimes)
Lightweight ~200 Kb & Small memory footprint
Fast binary communication protocol between WebUI and the browser (Instead of JSON)
Multi-platform & Multi-Browser
Using private profile for safety

Installation

Note

Until the next stable release it is recommended to use go-webui's latest development version.

As Go module

The easiest way to setup go-webui as a Go module is to use the setup.sh script.

It will run go get to retrieve the go-webui module and bootstrap the version of the WebUI C library that it is using.
- Release version
```
# Available soon.
# sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/webui-dev/go-webui/v2.5.1-beta-1.0/setup.sh)"
```
- Development version
```
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/webui-dev/go-webui/main/setup.sh)"
```

As submodule

The instructions below set up go-webui in a modules subdirectory of a go project.

go-project
├── modules
│   └── go-webui
├── ...
└── go.mod

Add and init the submodule

git submodule add https://github.com/webui-dev/go-webui.git modules/go-webui

git submodule update --init --filter=blob:none --recursive

replace the path accordingly in the g.mod file.

require github.com/webui-dev/go-webui/v2 v2.4.3

replace github.com/webui-dev/go-webui/v2 v2.4.3 => ./modules/go-webui

As git clone - for development and contribution purposes

The command below retrieves go-webui as a lightweight, filtered clone.

git clone --recursive --shallow-submodules --filter=blob:none --also-filter-submodules \
  https://github.com/webui-dev/go-webui.git

Usage

Example

<!-- index.html -->
<!doctype html>
<html>
   <head>
      <script src="webui.js"></script>
      <style>
         body {
            background: linear-gradient(to left, #36265a, #654da9);
            color: AliceBlue;
            font: 16px sans-serif;
            text-align: center;
            margin-top: 30px;
         }
      </style>
   </head>
   <body>
      <h1>Welcome to WebUI!</h1>
      <input type="text" id="name" value="Neo" />
      <button onclick="handleGoResponse();">Call Go</button>
      <br />
      <samp id="greeting"></samp>
      <script>
         async function handleGoResponse() {
            const inputName = document.getElementById('name');
            // Call a Go function.
            const result = await webui.greet(inputName.value);
            document.getElementById('greeting').innerHTML = result;
         }
      </script>
   </body>
</html>

// main.go
package main

import (
	"fmt"

	ui "github.com/webui-dev/go-webui/v2"
)

func greet(e ui.Event) string {
	name, _ := ui.GetArg[string](e)
	fmt.Printf("%s has reached the backend!\n", name)
	jsResp := fmt.Sprintf("Hello %s 🐇", name)
	return jsResp
}

func main() {
	// Create a window.
	w := ui.NewWindow()
	// Bind a Go function.
	ui.Bind(w, "greet", greet)
	// Show frontend.
	w.Show("index.html")
	// Wait until all windows get closed.
	ui.Wait()
}

Find more examples in the examples/ directory.

Documentation

Enable TLS/SSL

Enable WebUI's security layer by adding the webui_tls build tag.

go run -tags webui_tls <path>

Debugging

To use WebUI's debug build, add the webui_log build tag. E.g.:

go run -tags webui_log minimal.go

Online Documentation (WIP)

UI & The Web Technologies

Borislav Stanimirov discusses using HTML5 in the web browser as GUI at the C++ Conference 2019 (YouTube).

Web application UI design is not just about how a product looks but how it works. Using web technologies in your UI makes your product modern and professional, And a well-designed web application will help you make a solid first impression on potential customers. Great web application design also assists you in nurturing leads and increasing conversions. In addition, it makes navigating and using your web app easier for your users.

Why Use Web Browsers?

Today's web browsers have everything a modern UI needs. Web browsers are very sophisticated and optimized. Therefore, using it as a GUI will be an excellent choice. While old legacy GUI lib is complex and outdated, a WebView-based app is still an option. However, a WebView needs a huge SDK to build and many dependencies to run, and it can only provide some features like a real web browser. That is why WebUI uses real web browsers to give you full features of comprehensive web technologies while keeping your software lightweight and portable.

How Does it Work?

Think of WebUI like a WebView controller, but instead of embedding the WebView controller in your program, which makes the final program big in size, and non-portable as it needs the WebView runtimes. Instead, by using WebUI, you use a tiny static/dynamic library to run any installed web browser and use it as GUI, which makes your program small, fast, and portable. All it needs is a web browser.

Runtime Dependencies Comparison

	WebView	Qt	WebUI
Runtime Dependencies on Windows	WebView2	QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets	*A Web Browser*
Runtime Dependencies on Linux	GTK3, WebKitGTK	QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets	*A Web Browser*
Runtime Dependencies on macOS	Cocoa, WebKit	QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets	*A Web Browser*

Wrappers

Language	Status	Link
Go	✔️	Go-WebUI
Nim	✔️	Nim-WebUI
Pascal	✔️	Pascal-WebUI
Python	✔️	Python-WebUI
Rust	not complete	Rust-WebUI
TypeScript / JavaScript	✔️	Deno-WebUI
V	✔️	V-WebUI
Zig	not complete	Zig-WebUI

Supported Web Browsers

Browser	Windows	macOS	Linux
Mozilla Firefox	✔️	✔️	✔️
Google Chrome	✔️	✔️	✔️
Microsoft Edge	✔️	✔️	✔️
Chromium	✔️	✔️	✔️
Yandex	✔️	✔️	✔️
Brave	✔️	✔️	✔️
Vivaldi	✔️	✔️	✔️
Epic	✔️	✔️	not available
Apple Safari	not available	coming soon	not available
Opera	coming soon	coming soon	coming soon

License

Licensed under the MIT License.

webui-dev/go-webui