Static file serving for Electron apps
Normally you would just use win.loadURL('file://…'), but that doesn't work when you're making a single-page web app, which most Electron apps are today, as history.pushState()'ed URLs don't exist on disk. It serves files if they exist, and falls back to index.html if not, which means you can use router modules like react-router, vue-router, etc.
npm install electron-serveRequires Electron 37 or later.
import {app, BrowserWindow} from 'electron';
import serve from 'electron-serve';
const loadURL = serve({directory: 'renderer'});
let mainWindow;
(async () => {
await app.whenReady();
mainWindow = new BrowserWindow();
await loadURL(mainWindow);
// Or optionally with search parameters.
await loadURL(mainWindow, {id: 4, foo: 'bar'});
// The above is equivalent to this:
await mainWindow.loadURL('app://-');
// The `-` is just the required hostname
})();Type: object
Type: string
Default: '.'
The directory to serve, relative to the app root directory.
Type: string
Default: 'app'
Custom scheme. For example, foo results in your directory being available at foo://-.
Type: string
Default: '-'
Custom hostname.
Type: string
Default: 'index'
Custom HTML filename. This gets appended with '.html'.
Type: boolean
Default: true
Whether CORS should be enabled. Useful for testing purposes.
Type: string
Default: electron.session.defaultSession
The partition where the protocol should be installed, if not using Electron's default partition.
The serve function returns a loadUrl function, which you use to serve your HTML file in that window.
Required
Type: BrowserWindow
The window to load the file in.
Type: object | URLSearchParams
Key value pairs or an URLSearchParams instance to set as the search parameters.
ES modules (ES2015+ modules) work out of the box. JavaScript files are served with the correct text/javascript MIME type, allowing you to use ES6 import/export syntax:
<script type="module">
import {myFunction} from './my-module.js';
</script>Source maps are fully supported for debugging. .map files are served with the correct MIME type, enabling Chrome DevTools to load them properly for debugging minified code.
Since files are served via a custom protocol, Node.js require() calls with relative paths won't work as expected. Use <script src="..."> tags, bundlers like Webpack, or <script>require('./file.js')</script> instead of <script src="./file.js">.
To serve different directories or files for different windows, use unique scheme names:
const loadMain = serve({directory: 'main', scheme: 'app'});
const loadSettings = serve({directory: 'settings', scheme: 'settings'});
// Or different files from the same directory
const loadMain = serve({directory: 'dist', file: 'main', scheme: 'main'});
const loadPopup = serve({directory: 'dist', file: 'popup', scheme: 'popup'});Note: If you are using custom partition in BrowserWindow, it must match the partition in the serve options.
- electron-util - Useful utilities for developing Electron apps and modules
- electron-reloader - Simple auto-reloading for Electron apps during development
- electron-debug - Adds useful debug features to your Electron app
- electron-context-menu - Context menu for your Electron app
- electron-dl - Simplified file downloads for your Electron app
- electron-unhandled - Catch unhandled errors and promise rejections in your Electron app
