Vite+Electron = ๐ฅ
This is a secure template for electron applications. Written following the latest safety requirements, recommendations and best practices.
Under the hood is used Vite โ super fast, nextgen bundler, and electron-builder for compilation.
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This template maintained by Alex Kozack. You can ๐ sponsor him for continued development of this template.
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Found a problem? Pull requests are welcome.
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If you have ideas, questions or suggestions - Welcome to discussions. ๐
Follow these steps to get started with this template:
- Click the Use this template button (you must be logged in) or just clone this repo.
- If you want use another package manager don't forget edit
.github/workflows
-- it usesnpm
by default.
That's all you need. ๐
Note: This template uses npm v7 feature โ Installing Peer Dependencies Automatically. If you are using a different package manager, you may need to install some peerDependencies manually.
- Template use the latest electron version with all the latest security patches.
- The architecture of the application is built according to the security guids and best practices.
- The latest version of the electron-builder is used to compile the application.
- Vite is used to bundle all source codes. This is an extremely fast packer that has a bunch of great features. You can learn more about how it is arranged in this video.
- Vite supports reading
.env
files. My template has a separate command to generate.d.ts
file with type definition your environment variables.
Vite provides you with many useful features, such as: TypeScript
, TSX/JSX
, CSS/JSON Importing
, CSS Modules
, Web Assembly
and much more.
- The Latest TypeScript is used for all source code.
- Vite supports TypeScript out of the box. However, it does not support type checking.
- Code formatting rules follow the latest TypeScript recommendations and best practices thanks to @typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin.
Note: If you do not need a TypeScript, you can easily abandon it. To do this, You do not need to make any bundler configuration changes, etc. Just replace all .ts
files with .js
files. Additionally, it will be useful to delete TS-specific files, plug-ins and dependencies like tsconfig.json
, @typescript-eslint/*
, etc.
- By default, web pages are built using Vue. However, you can easily change it. Or do not use additional frameworks at all. (See React fork)
- Also, by default, the vue-router version
is used.
- Code formatting rules follow the latest Vue recommendations and best practices thanks to eslint-plugin-vue.
- Installed Vue.js devtools beta with Vue 3 support.
See examples of web pages for different frameworks.
- The configured workflow for check the types for each push and PR.
- The configured workflow for check the code style for each push and PR.
- Automatic tests used spectron. Simple, automated test check:
- Does the main window created and visible?
- Is the main window not empty?
- Is dev tools closed?
- Each time you push changes to the
main
branch,release
workflow starts, which creates release draft.- The version is automatically set based on the current date in the format "yy.mm.dd".
- Notes are automatically generated and added to the release draft.
- Code signing supported. See
compile
job inrelease
workflow.
- Auto-update is supported. After the release will be published, all client applications will download the new version and install updates silently.
This template was created to make my work easier. It may not be universal, but I try to keep it that way.
I am actively involved in its development. But I do not guarantee that this template will be maintained in the future.
At the moment, there are the following problems:
- โ Some files require refactoring.
- โ Typechecking
renderer
package in CI implemented by, which has a very early version. This is not a problem if you do not use Vue or TypeScript.
- โ Release notes are created automatically based on commit history.
.github/actions/release-notes
is used for generation. It may not provide some scenarios. If you encounter a problem - write about it. - โณ I want to migrate all code base to ESM. But because Nodejs ecosystem is unprepared I have not known whether this will give more benefits or more inconvenience.
Some improvement or problems can be listed in issues.
Pull requests are welcome.
The template required a minimum dependencies. Only Vite is used for building, nothing more.
The structure of this template is very similar to the structure of a monorepo.
The entire source code of the program is divided into three modules (packages) that are bundled each independently:
packages/main
Electron main script.packages/preload
Used inBrowserWindow.webPreferences.preload
. See Checklist: Security Recommendations.packages/renderer
Electron web page.
Packages main
and preload
are built in library mode as it is a simple javascript.
renderer
package build as regular web app.
The build of web resources is performed in the scripts/build.js
. Its analogue is a sequential call to vite build
for each package.
Next step is run packaging and compilation a ready for distribution Electron app for macOS, Windows and Linux with "auto update" support out of the box.
To do this, using the electron-builder:
- In npm script
compile
: This script is configured to compile the application as quickly as possible. It is not ready for distribution, is compiled only for the current platform and is used for debugging. - In GitHub Action: The application is compiled for any platform and ready-to-distribute files are automatically added to the draft GitHub release.
According to Electron's security guidelines, Node.js integration is disabled for remote content. This means that you cannot call any Node.js api in the packages/renderer
directly. To do this, you must describe the interface in the packages/preload
where Node.js api is allowed:
// packages/preload/src/index.tsx
import {readFile} from 'fs/promises'
const api = {
readConfig: () => readFile('/path/to/config.json', {encoding: 'utf-8'}),
}
contextBridge.exposeInMainWorld('electron', api)
// packages/renderer/src/App.vue
import {useElectron} from '/@/use/electron'
const {readConfig} = useElectron()
Read more about Security Considerations.
Note: Context isolation disabled for test
environment. See #693.
All environment variables set as part of the import.meta
, so you can access them as follows: import.meta.env
.
You can also build type definitions of your variables by running scripts/buildEnvTypes.js
. This command will create types/env.d.ts
file with describing all environment variables for all modes.
The mode option is used to specify the value of import.meta.env.MODE
and the corresponding environment variables files that needs to be loaded.
By default, there are two modes:
production
is used by defaultdevelopment
is used bynpm run watch
scripttest
is used bynpm test
script
When running building, environment variables are loaded from the following files in your project root:
.env # loaded in all cases
.env.local # loaded in all cases, ignored by git
.env.[mode] # only loaded in specified env mode
.env.[mode].local # only loaded in specified env mode, ignored by git
Note: only variables prefixed with VITE_
are exposed to your code (e.g. VITE_SOME_KEY=123
) and SOME_KEY=123
will not. you can access VITE_SOME_KEY
using import.meta.env.VITE_SOME_KEY
. This is because the .env
files may be used by some users for server-side or build scripts and may contain sensitive information that should not be exposed in code shipped to browsers.
See Contributing Guide.