CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptnode.jsformselectron
Friso Kluitenberg
Friso Kluitenberg

Reputation: 1179

Electron - Processing Input

I recently started to get my feet wet with Electron. I really like the principles behind it but I find it a little confusing to do some things.

For example, how do you process user input? I've an main.js and a BrowserWindow pointing to a local html file (containing some user settings with input field).

How do I access this data when the HTML form is submitted (to either the same file or another one)?

main.js

    const {app, BrowserWindow} = require('electron')
let win

function createWindow () {
  win = new BrowserWindow({width: 800, height: 600})
  win.loadURL('file://' + __dirname + '/index.html')

  // Emitted when the window is closed.
  win.on('closed', () => {
    win = null
  })

  // Open the DevTools.
  // win.webContents.openDevTools()
}

app.on('window-all-closed', () => {
  if (process.platform !== 'darwin') {
    app.quit()
  }
})

app.on('activate', () => {
  if (win === null) {
    createWindow()
  }
})

// In this file you can include the rest of your app's specific main process
// code. You can also put them in separate files and require them here.

//Start the main window
app.on('ready', createWindow)

index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>
    <form action="" method="post">
        <input type="text" name="test-1">
    </form>
</body>
</html>

Upvotes: 10

Views: 8561

Answers (1)

Dennis W
Dennis W

Reputation: 961

With Electron, node.js is not acting as a webserver with routes like it would be in a typical web application scenario. Instead of sending requests to routes, you would create a single page application using a javascript framework like Angular, React, Knockout, etc. At that point, you no longer need to handle routing. You would tie your 'Submit' click event to a javascript function directly within the page, and process the input from there.

You can do everything from the page's javascript context that you can do from the node.js main process context. For instance, if you needed to access the file system from your page, you would use the Remote module to gain access to the node.js native APIs.

For example:

// Gain access to the node.js file system api
function useNodeApi() {
  const remote = require('electron').remote;
  const fs = remote.require('fs');
  fs.writeFile('test.txt', 'Hello, I was written by the renderer process!');
}

I've rarely come across a situation where I needed to pass control back to the main process to accomplish something. Once the BrowserWindow launches, anything you could ever need to do could be done from the renderer process. This pretty much eliminates the need to do things like submit form posts via http.

Upvotes: 6

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