electron-request-response

This package allows you to communicate with the main process or render processes via a rest like interface. This package can only be used as part of an Electron app, it is not designed to be used with just a Node server or in a browser.

Why not IPC?

The IPC mechanism in Electron is quite powerful, but also quite cumbersome. A rest like interface is much more friendly and also more familiar to most JavaScript developers.

Concepts

• Host - either the main process (CONSTANTS.MAIN_PROCESS.HOST) or the name of any BrowserWindow which you have made addressable via the makeAddressable(name, browserWindow) method
• Route - an addressable endpoint. You register these in either the main process for use with the main process host, or in BrowserWindow processes when calling methods in those BrowserWindow processes.

API docs

You can find the API documentation in the Wiki for this repo

Quick start

In the main process:

var router = require('electron-request-response/main');

// electron startup stuff omitted

app.on('ready', () => {
  firstWindow = new BrowserWindow({height: 700, width: 800, frame: true, resizeable: true});
  secondWindow = new BrowserWindow({height: 700, width: 800, frame: true, resizeable: true});

  router.makeAddressable('first-window', firstWindow);
  router.makeAddressable('second-window', secondWindow);

  // there's no need to make a host unaddressable, this will happen automatically when the window is closed.

  // do some other stuff
}

Somewhere in the first window JS files

var router = require('electron-request-response/render');

// do some stuff that makes us want to communiate with second-window

var msgObj = {
  any_fields_you_want: 'Hey did you get this?'
};

router.request('second-window', '/some/path', msgObj)
    .then((response) => {
      console.log(resoinse); // on any day but Wednesday will print "I got it!"
      console.log('Yay! My message was received!');
    })
    .catch(function (err) {
      console.log('Oh no! Something went wrong!');
      console.log(err); // on Wednesday will print "Go away, it's hump day"
    });

Somewhere in the second window JS files

var router = require('electron-request-response/render');

// register a route

router.registerRoute('/some/path', function (data, callback) {
  console.log(data.any_fields_you_want); // will log "Hey did you get this?
  var shouldError = (new Date()).getDay() === 3; // we don't work on hump day
  if (shouldError) {
    return callback('Go away, it\'s hump day', null); // we could also use an object as the error here...
  }
  return callback(null, 'I got it!');
});