Vite Electron React Builder Boilerplate

Vite+Electron+React

This template is forked from Vite Electron Builder Boilerplate, now prepared for react.

Vite is used for compilation, and electron-builder for packaging.

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Support

• This fork is maintained by Autumn.

• Found a problem? Pull requests are welcome.

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Get started

Follow these steps to get started with this template:

1. Click the Use this template button (you must be logged in) or just clone this repo.
2. If you want use another package manager don't forget edit .github/workflows -- it uses npm by default.

That's all you need.

Note: This template uses npm v7 feature — Installing Peer Dependencies Automatically. If you are using a different package manager, you may need to install some peerDependencies manually.

Features

Electron

• 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

• 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. You can also specify types of your environment variables in types/vite-env.d.ts.

Vite provides you with many useful features, such as: TypeScript, TSX/JSX, CSS/JSON Importing, CSS Modules, Web Assembly and much more.

See all Vite features here.

TypeScript

• 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.

React (optional)

• By default, web pages are built using React. However, you can easily change it. Or do not use additional frameworks at all. See examples of web pages for different frameworks.
• Code formatting rules follow the latest Vue recommendations and best practices thanks to eslint-plugin-react.

How it works

The template required a minimum dependencies. Only Vite is used for building, nothing more.

Project Structure

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 in BrowserWindow.webPreferences.preload. See Checklist: Security Recommendations.
• packages/renderer Electron web page.

Build web resources

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.

Compile App

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.

Using Node.js API in renderer

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.ts
import {readFile} from 'fs/promises'

// Please considering using ipcMain and ipcRenderer instead
const api = {
  readConfig: () =>  readFile('/path/to/config.json', {encoding: 'utf-8'}),
}

contextBridge.exposeInMainWorld('electron', api)

// source under packages/renderer/

const {readConfig} = window.electron

Read more about Security Considerations.

Modes and Environment Variables

All environment variables set as part of the import.meta, so you can access them as follows: import.meta.env.

You can also specify types of your environment variables in types/vite-env.d.ts.

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 default
• development is used by npm run watch 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.

Contribution

See Contributing Guide.