What is Covalent?

What is Electron?

Anyone else using Electron?

So what about?

Well, glad you asked:

Covalent-Electron

• https://github.com/Teradata/covalent-electron

• Production Build

  • Creates desktop executable of Javascript/Typescript/CSS/HTML Application

• Development Build
  • Allows for Live Reload of code

• So why is it cool?

  • Code is same Javascript/Typescript/CSS/HTML
  • Can use same Covalent/Angular2/Material components and modules
  • User Experience stays the same whether in Desktop Environment or in Browser
  • Unlike in Browser can get full access to desktop
    • Example: fs node_module

• Usage in Teradata

  • Currently being used by new version of Teradata Studio due out end of this year
  • Soon to be used in App Center

• How does it work?

• Runtime Flow

  • Electron provides a runtime to build desktop applications with pure JavaScript/Typescript and node.js

  • Electron takes a main file defined in your package.json file and executes it. This main file is usually named main.js

  • main.js is what is executed by the main process. At this point Javascript can be executed but there is no 'window' or 'gui' to interact with yet

    • In the main.js you create one or more BrowserWindow. The BrowserWindow then runs its own renderer process

    • This renderer process takes a web page (an HTML file which references the usual CSS files, JavaScript files, images, etc.) and renders it in the window

    • The web pages are rendered with the Chromium Engine, giving it a high level of compatibility with web standards

  • In the main process you can access the native GUI through a series of modules available directly in Electron.

    • Your desktop application can access all Node modules like the fs node-module we showed above or the request module to make HTTP calls, etc.

    • You can also drop in any other external node_modules found out on npm or ones you write your self and run them as if you were in node.js