Vite + Vue 3 + electron + TypeScript

Their is a new post about this will full setup. check it here: https://dev.to/brojenuel/vue-3-vite-typescript-electron-my-full-setup-kgm

A lot of people have been asking how to do electron in vite vue 3 so here it is.

Step 1:

Were going to go straight a head and create a Vite project by running:

// run this and choose vue as your template,
// you can choose typescript or js. whatever you want.
yarn create vite

Step 2:

Next cd to your project folder, and let as also add dependencies that we will need for our electron development and building.

yarn add -D concurrently cross-env electron electron-builder wait-on

Be Sure to install all dependencies by running

yarn install

Step 3:

Let us edit our package.json. Let us add build property. You can read more about this electron.build website.

 "build": {
    "appId": "com.my-website.my-app",
    "productName": "MyApp",
    "copyright": "Copyright © 2019 ${author}",
    "mac": {
      "category": "public.app-category.utilities"
    },
    "nsis": {
      "oneClick": false,
      "allowToChangeInstallationDirectory": true
    },
    "files": [
      "dist/**/*",
      "electron/**/*"
    ],
    "directories": {
      "buildResources": "assets",
      "output": "dist_electron"
    }
  }

and then let us also add some scripts in our package.json

"scripts": {
    "dev": "vite",
    "build": "vue-tsc --noEmit && vite build",
    "serve": "vite preview",
    "electron": "wait-on tcp:3000 && cross-env IS_DEV=true electron .",
    "electron:pack": "electron-builder --dir",
    "electron:dev": "concurrently -k \"cross-env BROWSER=none yarn dev\" \"yarn electron\"",
    "electron:builder": "electron-builder",
    "build:for:electron": "vue-tsc --noEmit && cross-env ELECTRON=true vite build",
    "app:build": "yarn build:for:electron && yarn electron:builder"
  },

Let us also dont forget yo add author and main in our package.json file.

{
  "name": "vite-electron-app-test",
  "author": "BroJenuel",
  "version": "0.0.0",
  "main": "electron/electron.js",
  ...
}

Step 4:

let us edit our vite.config.js or vite.config.ts

import { defineConfig } from 'vite'
import vue from '@vitejs/plugin-vue'

// https://vitejs.dev/config/
export default defineConfig({
  base: process.env.ELECTRON=="true" ? './' : ".",
  plugins: [vue()]
})

if we are running in electron production, the base will change.

Step 5:

Let us create a new folder and let us call it electron
inside this we will create an electron.js.

// electron/electron.js
const path = require('path');
const { app, BrowserWindow } = require('electron');

const isDev = process.env.IS_DEV == "true" ? true : false;

function createWindow() {
  // Create the browser window.
  const mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({
    width: 800,
    height: 600,
    webPreferences: {
      preload: path.join(__dirname, 'preload.js'),
      nodeIntegration: true,
    },
  });

  // and load the index.html of the app.
  // win.loadFile("index.html");
  mainWindow.loadURL(
    isDev
      ? 'http://localhost:3000'
      : `file://${path.join(__dirname, '../dist/index.html')}`
  );
  // Open the DevTools.
  if (isDev) {
    mainWindow.webContents.openDevTools();
  }
}

// This method will be called when Electron has finished
// initialization and is ready to create browser windows.
// Some APIs can only be used after this event occurs.
app.whenReady().then(() => {
  createWindow()
  app.on('activate', function () {
    // On macOS it's common to re-create a window in the app when the
    // dock icon is clicked and there are no other windows open.
    if (BrowserWindow.getAllWindows().length === 0) createWindow()
  })
});

// Quit when all windows are closed, except on macOS. There, it's common
// for applications and their menu bar to stay active until the user quits
// explicitly with Cmd + Q.
app.on('window-all-closed', () => {
  if (process.platform !== 'darwin') {
    app.quit();
  }
});

and create another file preload.js.

// electron/preload.js

// All of the Node.js APIs are available in the preload process.
// It has the same sandbox as a Chrome extension.
window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {
    const replaceText = (selector, text) => {
      const element = document.getElementById(selector)
      if (element) element.innerText = text
    }

    for (const dependency of ['chrome', 'node', 'electron']) {
      replaceText(`${dependency}-version`, process.versions[dependency])
    }
  })

step 6: And your done 👍👍

Run yarn electron:dev to work with electron in development mode.

yarn electron:dev

Run yarn app:build to build your electron app.

yarn app:build

Run yarn dev to open vite in browser in development mode.

yarn dev

Run yarn build to build files and can be served.

yarn build

---

Hey! If you like to help me out, you can donate. Thanks :)

You can Check the Source Code in My Youtube Channel Git Repository:
https://github.com/BroJenuel-Youtube/vite-vue-electron

Comments

[rodrigoaraujolima92]

very nice tutorial

[Jenuel Oras Ganawed]

Thanks mate :)

[Alexander Gorbunov]

Thank you for your tutorial!:)
It helped me to configure dev environment for electron, though I'm not using ts😁

[Jenuel Oras Ganawed]

awesome! Glad to help :)

[Dmitriy Nevezhin]

don't work!

(node:4232) electron: Failed to load URL: localhost:3000/ with error: ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED
(Use electron --trace-warnings ... to show where the warning was created)

vite is not running after 'npm run electron'

[Jenuel Oras Ganawed]

I redid what I wrote above, but still works... try re reading the instruction above,, specially the script in package.json

[Franco]

This problem might be because vite port does not listen in port 3000 of local host. For fix it, see which port is vite running, and then, put it in the main.ts file

[mujtaba-lab]

I got stuck on this one too, here is how I got through:

Or use two separate terminal and run pnpm vite and pnpm dev:electron

"from the article"

[liu li]

Tanks! But i get some problem and could you help me?
With the demo i can run Vue3 + Vite in Electron but i can't use electron in xxx.vue

The code i write is copy what you write, the Demo.vue is what i write.

<script setup lang="ts">
// import { ipcRenderer } from 'electron'
// const x = window.require('electron')
const e = require('electron')

function handleGetDrives() {
    // ipcRenderer.send('on-get-drives', 1)
}
</script>

[Douglas Lopes]

There is some details that changed on vite seems the creation of this post. You have to make some adjusts:

The main.js and preload.js file that controls electron shoud have now the extension cjs, so they should be renamed to main.cjs and preload.cjs because vite uses ES6 and this files don't.

// on package.json
// "vue-tsc --noEmit" should be now just "vite build"
// the tcp port used by vite is now 5173
"scripts": {
    "dev": "vite",
    "build": "vite build && vite build",
    "serve": "vite preview",
    "electron": "wait-on tcp:5173 && cross-env IS_DEV=true electron .",
    "electron:pack": "electron-builder --dir",
    "electron:dev": "concurrently -k \"cross-env BROWSER=none yarn dev\" \"yarn electron\"",
    "electron:builder": "electron-builder",
    "build:for:electron": "vite build && cross-env ELECTRON=true vite build",
    "app:build": "yarn build:for:electron && yarn electron:builder"
  },

// on main.js
// the tcp port used by vite is now 5173
mainWindow.loadURL(
  isDev
    ? 'http://localhost:5173'
    : `file://${path.join(__dirname, '../dist/index.html')}`
);

[Wolf Developer]

I had some troubles to make it work. Your article really helped me, the app is created with success!
However, I see in VS Code that both in electron.js and preload.js I have some errors, because the following are not defined: require, process, __dirname. Do you know a way to fix the problem? Or it's just a clashing configuration from tsconfig.json?
Thanks!

[Pacharapol Withayasakpunt]

It would be nicer if Electron itself is TypeScript as well.

[Jenuel Oras Ganawed]

You can actually change it to typescript if you want.

[Falcort]

As soon as I am trying to use IPC I have an __dirname is not defined in the web console, any solutions ?

[Jenuel Oras Ganawed]

This video might help,,, its better to use something like context bridge in our preloadjs to create apis for our frontend. It is recommended by the electron documentation..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9rSUxZkEQw&list=PLwlbj033Wc51ZwPQx3bYO1eb2PProKgBX&index=6&t=617s

[Falcort]

Thanks a lot, it worked !

[Michael Wieczorek]

Unfortunately, your tutorial whilst uses TS for the renderer, your main process code is only in JS. Anyone who's writing a desktop app would want TS for both renderer and main process. How to use TS for this and using module aliases?

[robertg]

It worked perfectly. Thanks!

[Jenuel Oras Ganawed]

Im Glad I could help :)