Electron: Start to Finish

What This Session is About

Getting up and running on Electron, a a framework to build cross platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. You'll walk away with a fully functional Electron desktop app that you can take apart and customize, along with the knowledge to confidently start building your own Electron apps. This repository houses a series of introductory-to-intermediate exercises to Git familiar with Electron by manipulating and extending a prebuilt weather app.

Summary

Built with the photon user interface kit. Uses the Dark Sky Forecast API as a data source.

Table of Contents

• Prerequisites
• Cheat Sheets
• End Product
• Resources

Prerequisites

• Install Git
• Get familiar with Git commands
• Install a text editor
• Install Node.js

Install Git

macOS

• Mac users, while you probably already have a version of Git on your system, it may be out-of-date.
• Consider installing the latest stable version of Git with Homebrew

  brew install git

• If you prefer a GUI, try GitHub Desktop

Windows

• GitHub Desktop is an easy way to install the Git command line tools on Windows.

Linux

• While some Linux distributions come with a version of Git installed, it's often out-of-date. This guide has recommended commands to install Git with your distribution's preferred package manager.

Get familiar with Git commands

You'll want to know how to fork and clone a Git repository, and how to check out a branch.

If you need a refresher, consider exploring our free on-demand training.

Install a text editor

Install Node.js

Q: Why do we need to install Node.js if Electron includes Node.js?

A: While Electron does include its own version of Node.js, what we'll install first includes npm, the Node Package Manager. NPM is what powers our dependency installation and build processes.

macOS

• Homebrew (recommended) or installer package
  • Treehouse has a Homebrew installation guide
  • …and a Node.js installation guide
• Homebrew makes it easier to upgrade Node.js, and doesn't require admin privileges (sudo) or manually updating the $PATH.

Windows

• Installer package
  • Treehouse has a nice step-by-step guide

Linux

• Let's leave this up to users, making the assumption that as Linux users they can figure it out 😁
  • Treehouse recommends installing via Linuxbrew

Cheat-Sheets

The cheat sheets for each activity are linked here:

• Exercise 1: Getting Started
• Exercise 2: Creating a File
• Exercise 3: Staging the File
• Exercise 4: Committing the File
• Exercise 5: Attach the Commit to a Branch
• Exercise 6: Create a Pack File

End Product

At the end of all of our exercises, you should have an app that looks similar to this!

Extended Resources

• satelliteworkshops/electron-weather#2