electron-react-boilerplate

Live editing development on desktop app

Electron application boilerplate based on React, Redux, React Router, Webpack, React Transform HMR for rapid application development

Screenshot

Install

First, clone the repo via git:

git clone https://github.com/chentsulin/electron-react-boilerplate.git your-project-name

And then install dependencies.

$ cd your-project-name && npm install

Run

Run these two commands simultaneously in different console tabs.

$ npm run hot-server
$ npm run start-hot

or run two servers with one command

$ npm run dev

Note: requires a node version >= 4 and an npm version >= 2.

DevTools

Toggle Chrome DevTools

• OS X: Cmd Alt I or F12
• Linux: Ctrl Shift I or F12
• Windows: Ctrl Shift I or F12

See electron-debug for more information.

DevTools extension

This boilerplate is included following DevTools extensions:

• Devtron - Install via electron-debug.
• React Developer Tools - Install via electron-devtools-installer.
• Redux DevTools - Install via electron-devtools-installer.

You can find the tabs on Chrome DevTools.

If you want to update extensions version, please set UPGRADE_EXTENSIONS env, just run:

$ UPGRADE_EXTENSIONS=1 npm run dev

# For Windows
$ set UPGRADE_EXTENSIONS=1 && npm run dev

Externals

If you use any 3rd party libraries which can't or won't be built with webpack, you must list them in your webpack.config.base.js：

externals: [
  // put your node 3rd party libraries which can't be built with webpack here (mysql, mongodb, and so on..)
]

For a common example, to install Bootstrap, npm i --save bootstrap and link them in the head of app.html

<link rel="stylesheet" href="../node_modules/bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.css" />
<link rel="image/svg+xml" href="../node_modules/bootstrap/dist/fonts/glyphicons-halflings-regular.eot" />
...

Make sure to list bootstrap in externals in webpack.config.base.js or the app won't include them in the package:

externals: ['bootstrap']

CSS Modules

This boilerplate out of the box is configured to use css-modules.

All .css file extensions will use css-modules unless it has .global.css.

If you need global styles, stylesheets with .global.css will not go through the css-modules loader. e.g. app.global.css

Package

$ npm run package

To package apps for all platforms:

$ npm run package-all

To package apps with options:

$ npm run package -- --[option]

Options

• --name, -n: Application name (default: ElectronReact)
• --version, -v: Electron version (default: latest version)
• --asar, -a: asar support (default: false)
• --icon, -i: Application icon
• --all: pack for all platforms

Use electron-packager to pack your app with --all options for darwin (osx), linux and win32 (windows) platform. After build, you will find them in release folder. Otherwise, you will only find one for your os.

test, tools, release folder and devDependencies in package.json will be ignored by default.

Default Ignore modules

We add some module's peerDependencies to ignore option as default for application size reduction.

• babel-core is required by babel-loader and its size is ~19 MB
• node-libs-browser is required by webpack and its size is ~3MB.

Note: If you want to use any above modules in runtime, for example: require('babel/register'), you should move them from devDependencies to dependencies.

Building windows apps from non-windows platforms

Please checkout Building windows apps from non-windows platforms.

Dispatching redux actions from main process

see discusses in #118 and #108

How hot-reloading works on Electron

We use webpack-target-electron-renderer to provide a build target for electron renderer process. Read more information here.

Note: webpack >= 1.12.15 has built-in support for electron-main and electron-renderer targets.

How to keep the boilerplate updated

If your application is a fork from this repo, you can add this repo to another git remote:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/chentsulin/electron-react-boilerplate.git

Then, use git to merge some latest commits:

git pull upstream master

Native-like UI

If you want to have native-like User Interface (OS X El Capitan and Windows 10), react-desktop may perfect suit for you.

Maintainers

• C. T. Lin
• Jhen-Jie Hong

License

MIT © C. T. Lin