:rocket: Electron Nice Auto Reload

Reload your electron app nicely while developing !!!

Relaunch,Reload,Run-Script

If you want to relauch the app while we make some change in main.js

Or you just happen to change a css file, and it just need to reload the window:

Somehow you want more, you want to run a npm command while you change your .less file and it need to run command to generate a new css file:

Install

npm i electron-nice-auto-reload

How To Use

require in your main process

require('electron-nice-auto-reload')({
    rootPath: ...,
    rules: [],
    ignored: ...(pass to chokidar),
    log: true,
    devToolsReopen: true
})

e.g.

require('electron-nice-auto-reload')({
    rootPath: path.join(process.cwd(), 'src'),
    rules: [
        {
            // run lessc while style.less file is changed
            // and this script will change the style.css
            // hence reload all windows
            action: 'script',
            target: 'style\\.less',
            // lessc src/css/style.less src/css/style.css
            script: 'npm run less'
        },
        {
            // relaunch the app while main process related js files
            // were changed
            action: 'app.relaunch',
            target: 'preload\\.js|main\\.js'
        }
    ],
    ignored: /node_modules/,
    log: true,
    devToolsReopen: true
})

then start your electron app and develop it

Options

• rootPath: the root path which chokidar is watching

• rules:

  // Structure:
  //    options.rules = [rule1, rule2, ...]
  //    rule = {
  //       action: 'app.relaunch' | 'win.reload' | 'script',
  //       target: regex,
  //       script: string
  //    }

  • action means we can relaunch the app, reload all the BrowserWindow or even run script with node child_process.exec(). By default it is 'win.reload'
  • target means a regex string for matching a bunch of files for specific action
  • script means the script you use to run

• ignored: same as chokidar. By default it is /node_modules|[/\\]\./

• log: means to show the log or not. By default it is false

• devToolsReopen: means to reopen the devTools when the win.reload action is perform(to avoid some css style might misplace) By default it is false

Changelog

• 2020-09-04: mac OS support
• 2020-09-05: do nothing when no rules on other files