CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptelectron
tinagrit
tinagrit

Reputation: 41

Electron - prevent window close but allow redirects

I have a simple Electron app. The main process would open up a browser window (I call it mainWindow) and I would like to prevent users from closing it (for kiosk purposes; FYI, I already have kiosk: true. I'm just trying to add another layer of protection).

I have set up a beforeunload event listener in my renderer process like shown below:

window.onbeforeunload = (e) => {
   console.log('I do not want to be closed')
   e.returnValue = false 
}

This works well. It prevents closing of the window in every way (at least in macOS) and I could quit the process with mainWindow.destroy() in the main process. However, by doing this, I am not able to redirect my window to any other HTML files, no matter with location.href or mainWindow.loadFile() because it would fire the beforeunload event and prevent it from redirecting.

One solution I could think of is to use a fullscreen iframe in mainWindow and do the redirections there, but the communication between sandboxed iframe and the window that uses ipcRenderer would be too complex.

Apart from that, is there a work around to distinguish whether a beforeunload event was fired for it being closed or just being redirected?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 236

Answers (1)

Alexander Leithner
Alexander Leithner

Reputation: 3432

Instead of using the DOM onbeforeunload handler, you could listen for the BrowserWindow's very own close event in the Main Process, which is emitted before onbeforeunload but only when the window is actually going to close.

As per the documentation, you would have to call e.preventDefault () to prevent closing, but you wouldn't have to worry about page redirects.

const { BrowserWindow } = require ("electron");

let window;
// However you're initialising your BrowserWindow...

window.on ("close", event => {
    event.preventDefault ();
});

The documentation for #destroy () states that it will not emit the "close" event, thus everything should work as before, except you're listening for the event on the Main Process and gain window reloading.

Upvotes: 1

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