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 >= 3.

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

To package apps for the local platform:

$ npm run package

To package apps for all platforms:

First, refer to Multi Platform Build for dependencies.

Then,

$ npm run package-all

To package apps with options:

$ npm run package -- --[option]

Options

See electron-builder CLI Usage

Module Structure

This boilerplate uses a two package.json structure.

Some best practices around what modules to include, and how:

1. If the module is native to a platform or otherwise should be included with the published package (i.e. bootstrap, openbci), it should be listed under dependencies in ./app/package.json.
2. If a module is imported by another module, include it in dependencies in ./package.json. See this ESLint rule
3. Otherwise, modules used for building, testing and debugging should be included in devDependencies in ./package.json.

Dispatching redux actions from main process

see discusses in #118 and #108

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

Type Annotations

This project comes with Flow support out of the box! You can annotate your code with types, get Flow errors as ESLint errors, and get runtime errors of incorrect types with tcomb. types. Gradually add type annotations to function arguments and return values but if you don't want to add type checking, just don't add types. Type checks are turned off during production.

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
• Amila Welihinda

License

MIT © C. T. Lin