DEV Community

Cover image for I made an App Store
Just Patrick
Just Patrick

Posted on • Updated on

I made an App Store

Why

I love checking out new stuff, apps, apis, websites and such. And my obsession for trying out new stuff found me continuously visiting https://electronjs.org/apps. Its a website that allows people to browse apps made with electron. Developers add their apps by making a pull request to electronjs apps repo on Github. Every week there's always a new app added.

After visiting the website hundreds of times I started thinking why it wasn't an app store. I mean the general layout of it looks like an app store. At that time I was learning about reverse engineering closed apis and I thought it would be a fun project to build a desktop client for the website. On checking I saw that the api requests send back html which was not a problem as I had had some experience with parsing html from a previous project of mine FLB Podcasts. So I knew how to build it but I didn't really have time to do it. But last week I decided to take a break from building FLB Music and build it.

Where can I find it

I just pushed the alpha build yesterday so its only available here in the releases.

Features

  • Browse Apps from 10+ Categories
  • Search for apps by keyword and app name
  • Download .exe , .appimage ,.dmg and other file formats
  • Automatic Install for .exe files (.appimage soon, see roadmap)
  • Loads the app website if the ReadMe is absent for the app page

Screenshots

Some screenshots...
Explore Page
Download
App Page

Roadmap

  • Install apps without spawning the installer modal
  • Support installation of Appimages
  • Create a CLI that has the same functionalty
  • Encourage a Common ReadMe format from the app developers to have the app pages look more seeamless
  • Support for Youtube preview videos shown on the website

Top comments (17)

Collapse
 
gdenn profile image
Dennis Groß (he/him)

That looks amazing. The idea is also great to crawl through their html page to get all information you need for the app store.

I never thought about approaching personal projects from that ankle, awesome.

Collapse
 
patrickweb profile image
Just Patrick

Thanks a a lot

Collapse
 
moutasim profile image
Moutasim EL Ayoubi

Good job, don't forget the dark mode😉

Collapse
 
patrickweb profile image
Just Patrick

Its there 😅

Collapse
 
moutasim profile image
Moutasim EL Ayoubi

Great!

Collapse
 
aatmaj profile image
Aatmaj

Wow! That was cool!

Collapse
 
allantez_allan profile image
アラン

This is awesome

Collapse
 
nazimudheen_ti profile image
NAZIMUDHEEN TI

That's awesome

Collapse
 
wechulimaven profile image
vinChuli

This is inspiring for dreams just like me.

Collapse
 
capscode profile image
capscode

This is pretty COOL....
Nice :)

Collapse
 
dhaiwat10 profile image
Dhaiwat Pandya

Awesome job

Collapse
 
codespectremike profile image
Mike From CodeSpectre

This looks really great Patrick!

Collapse
 
gilbertkitetu profile image
Gilbertkitetu

Awesome

Collapse
 
blacky_yg profile image
Hamidou TESSILIMI

Well done 😉😉

Collapse
 
aqeelsmith profile image
Akhil

404 on the alpha build link.

Collapse
 
patrickweb profile image
Just Patrick

Thanks. I've fixed it

Collapse
 
pandademic profile image
Pandademic

Great job!