Create account

DEV Community

Kai Chen

Posted on May 26, 2020

Read Reddit without an internet connection

#octograd2020 #devgrad2020

My Final Project

I built a desktop app for reading Reddit without an internet connection.

Pre-download subreddits to read offline, including posts and their comments.

I built it with Sidhya Tikku who did the design, with the code being written by me.

Demo Link

Link to Code

kx-chen / Backpack

Backpack Reader - Read Reddit without an internet connection.

Backpack Reader

Backpack Reader is a desktop app for downloading and reading Reddit while offline.

Install

First, clone the repo via git. And then install the dependencies with yarn.

$ cd Backpack
$ yarn

Starting Development

Start the app in the dev environment.

$ yarn dev

Packaging for Production

To package apps for the local platform:

$ yarn package

Running Tests

This project uses Jest as the test runner.

$ yarn test

End to End Tests

Coming soon.

Code Structure/Tech Stack

app/

Main JavaScript code for Backpack Reader. Components are built with React.

Tech Stack:

React
Redux
Jest

Contributions

All contributions, pull requests, and feedback welcome! Roasts of all kinds welcome

Future Plans

End to End tests.

Authors and Acknowledgement

Sidhya Tikku - Design work
Kai Chen - Programming work

See also the list of contributors who participated in this project.

View on GitHub

How I built it (what's the stack? did I run into issues or discover something new along the way?)

Built with Electron, React, and Redux. Got more familiar with JavaScript, React, and Yarn along the way.

It was interesting and fun to look at Reddit on one screen and try to recreate its CSS by eyeball on the other.

Not too many fancy libraries were used, most of the code (like the navbar/sidebar) were created from scratch. Mostly using node-fetch for API requests, and node-fs-extra for managing files locally.

One of the challenges that we faced was collaborating. I live in Canada and Sidhya lives in India, so we had to schedule our Zoom calls at late in the night.

Additional Thoughts / Feelings / Stories

If you think this is a cool idea, it would mean the world to us if you gave a star on GitHub!

https://github.com/kx-chen/Backpack

Top comments (15)

angussmith2002 • May 26 '20

Wow this is awesome, and I have a suggestion as well! Perhaps, when you open Backpack Reader, you could have it automatically play the song "Aries - Racecar". I feel like this would add another dimension of "cool" to this project. Anywho, keep up the great work!

Toodaloo!