vite-plugin-electron

Electron 🔗 Vite

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In short, vite-plugin-electron makes developing Electron apps as easy as normal Vite projects.

Features

• 🔥 Hot Restart _{^{(Main process)}}
• 🔄 Hot Reload _{^{(Preload scripts)}}
• ⚡️ HMR _{^{(Renderer process)}}

• 🌱 Fully compatible with Vite and Vite's ecosystem _{^{(Based on Vite)}}
• 🔮 Full-featured JavaScript API, really easy to integrate with complex projects.
• 🐣 Few APIs, easy to use

Quick Setup

1. Add the following dependency to your project

npm i -D vite-plugin-electron

2. Add vite-plugin-electron to the plugins section of vite.config.ts

import electron from 'vite-plugin-electron/simple'

export default {
  plugins: [
    electron({
      main: {
        // Shortcut of `build.lib.entry`
        entry: 'electron/main.ts',
      },
      preload: {
        // Shortcut of `build.rollupOptions.input`
        input: 'electron/preload.ts',
      },
      // Optional: Use Node.js API in the Renderer process
      renderer: {},
    }),
  ],
}

3. Create the electron/main.ts file and type the following code

import { app, BrowserWindow } from 'electron'

app.whenReady().then(() => {
  const win = new BrowserWindow({
    title: 'Main window',
  })

  // You can use `process.env.VITE_DEV_SERVER_URL` when the vite command is called `serve`
  if (process.env.VITE_DEV_SERVER_URL) {
    win.loadURL(process.env.VITE_DEV_SERVER_URL)
  } else {
    // Load your file
    win.loadFile('dist/index.html');
  }
})

4. Add the main entry to package.json

{
+ "main": "dist-electron/main.mjs"
}

That's it! You can now use Electron in your Vite app ✨

Flat API

In most cases, the vite-plugin-electron/simple API is recommended. If you know very well how this plugin works or you want to use vite-plugin-electron API as a secondary encapsulation of low-level API, then the flat API is more suitable for you. It is also simple but more flexible. :)

The difference compared to the simple API is that it does not identify which entry represents preload and the adaptation to preload.

import electron from 'vite-plugin-electron'

export default {
  plugins: [
    electron({
      entry: 'electron/main.ts',
    }),
  ],
}

Flat API vs Simple API

• Simple API is based on the Flat API
• Simple API incluess some Preload scripts preset configs.
• Flat API provides some more general APIs, which you can use for secondary encapsulation, such as nuxt-electron.

Flat API _^(Define)

electron(options: ElectronOptions | ElectronOptions[])

export interface ElectronOptions {
  /**
   * Shortcut of `build.lib.entry`
   */
  entry?: import('vite').LibraryOptions['entry']
  vite?: import('vite').InlineConfig
  /**
   * Triggered when Vite is built every time -- `vite serve` command only.
   *
   * If this `onstart` is passed, Electron App will not start automatically.
   * However, you can start Electroo App via `startup` function.
   */
  onstart?: (args: {
    /**
     * Electron App startup function.
     * It will mount the Electron App child-process to `process.electronApp`.
     * @param argv default value `['.', '--no-sandbox']`
     * @param options options for `child_process.spawn`
     * @param customElectronPkg custom electron package name (default: 'electron')
     */
    startup: (argv?: string[], options?: import('node:child_process').SpawnOptions, customElectronPkg?: string) => Promise<void>
    /** Reload Electron-Renderer */
    reload: () => void
  }) => void | Promise<void>
}

Recommend Structure

Let's use the official template-vanilla-ts created based on create vite as an example

+ ├─┬ electron
+ │ └── main.ts
  ├─┬ src
  │ ├── main.ts
  │ ├── style.css
  │ └── vite-env.d.ts
  ├── .gitignore
  ├── favicon.svg
  ├── index.html
  ├── package.json
  ├── tsconfig.json
+ └── vite.config.ts

Built format

This is just the default behavior, and you can modify them at any time through custom config in the vite.config.js

{ "type": "module" }
┏————————————————————┳——————————┳———————————┓
│       built        │  format  │   suffix  │
┠————————————————————╂——————————╂———————————┨
│ main process       │   esm    │    .js    │
┠————————————————————╂——————————╂———————————┨
│ preload scripts    │   cjs    │   .mjs    │ diff
┠————————————————————╂——————————╂———————————┨
│ renderer process   │    -     │    .js    │
┗————————————————————┸——————————┸———————————┛

{ "type": "commonjs" } - default
┏————————————————————┳——————————┳———————————┓
│       built        │  format  │   suffix  │
┠————————————————————╂——————————╂———————————┨
│ main process       │   cjs    │    .js    │
┠————————————————————╂——————————╂———————————┨
│ preload scripts    │   cjs    │    .js    │ diff
┠————————————————————╂——————————╂———————————┨
│ renderer process   │    -     │    .js    │
┗————————————————————┸——————————┸———————————┛

Examples

There are many cases here 👉 electron-vite-samples

JavaScript API

vite-plugin-electron's JavaScript APIs are fully typed, and it's recommended to use TypeScript or enable JS type checking in VS Code to leverage the intellisense and validation.

• ElectronOptions - type
• resolveViteConfig - function, Resolve the default Vite's InlineConfig for build Electron-Main
• withExternalBuiltins - function
• build - function
• startup - function

Example

import { build, startup } from 'vite-plugin-electron'

const isDev = process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development'
const isProd = process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production'

build({
  entry: 'electron/main.ts',
  vite: {
    mode: process.env.NODE_ENV,
    build: {
      minify: isProd,
      watch: isDev ? {} : null,
    },
    plugins: [{
      name: 'plugin-start-electron',
      closeBundle() {
        if (isDev) {
          // Startup Electron App
          startup()
        }
      },
    }],
  },
})

Hot Reload

Since v0.29.0, when preload scripts are rebuilt, they will send an electron-vite&type=hot-reload event to the main process.
If your App doesn't need a renderer process, this will give you hot-reload.

// electron/main.ts

process.on('message', (msg) => {
  if (msg === 'electron-vite&type=hot-reload') {
    for (const win of BrowserWindow.getAllWindows()) {
      // Hot reload preload scripts
      win.webContents.reload()
    }
  }
})

How to work

It just executes the electron . command in the Vite build completion hook and then starts or restarts the Electron App.

Be aware

• 🚨 By default, the files in electron folder will be built into the dist-electron
• 🚨 Currently, "type": "module" is not supported in Electron

C/C++ Native

We have two ways to use C/C++ native modules

First way

In general, Vite may not correctly build Node.js packages, especially C/C++ native modules, but Vite can load them as external packages

So, put your Node.js package in dependencies. Unless you know how to properly build them with Vite

export default {
  plugins: [
    electron({
      entry: 'electron/main.ts',
      vite: {
        build: {
          rollupOptions: {
            // Here are some C/C++ modules them can't be built properly
            external: [
              'serialport',
              'sqlite3',
            ],
          },
        },
      },
    }),
  ],
}

Second way

Use 👉 vite-plugin-native

import native from 'vite-plugin-native'

export default {
  plugins: [
    electron({
      entry: 'electron/main.ts',
      vite: {
        plugins: [
          native(/* options */),
        ],
      },
    }),
  ],
}