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NW.js Essentials

By : Benoit

4.8 (5)

NW.js Essentials

4.8 (5)

By: Benoit

Overview of this book

If you are an experienced Node.js developer who wants to create amazing desktop applications using NW.js, this is the book for you. Prior knowledge of HTML5, jQuery, and CSS is assumed.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Meet NW.js

1. Meet NW.js

NW.js under the hood

Features and drawbacks of NW.js

Downloading and installing NW.js

Development tools

Writing and running your first "Hello World" app

Summary

2. NW.js Native UI APIs

2. NW.js Native UI APIs

The App API – the core of your applications

The Window API – working with windows on NW.js

The Screen API – screen geometry functions

The Menu API – handling window and context menus

File dialogs – opening and saving files

Opening files through file dragging

The Tray API – hide your application in plain sight

The Clipboard API – accessing the system clipboard

The Shell API – platform-dependent desktop functions

Summary

3. Leveraging the Power of Node.js

3. Leveraging the Power of Node.js

Routing and templating in NW.js

Node.js global and process objects

The window object

Using NW.js' main module

Handling paths in NW.js

NW.js context issues

Working with Node.js modules

Summary

4. Data Persistence Solutions and Other Browser Web APIs

4. Data Persistence Solutions and Other Browser Web APIs

Data persistence solutions

XMLHttpRequest and BLOBs

Handling media files

Shedding some light on security issues

The Web Notifications API

Summary

5. Let's Put It All Together

5. Let's Put It All Together

Let's get started!

A matter of style

The HTML5 skeleton

Let's dive deep into the application logic

The application layer

The NativeUI layer

Summary

6. Packaging Your Application for Distribution

6. Packaging Your Application for Distribution

The manifest file

The general logic behind the packaging procedure

Packaging NW.js applications for Mac OS X

Packaging NW.js applications for Microsoft Windows

Packaging NW.js applications for Linux

Securing your source code

About NW.js application licensing

Summary

7. Automated Packaging Tools

7. Automated Packaging Tools

Web2Executable

node-webkit-builder and grunt-node-webkit-builder

generator-node-webkit

Summary

8. Let's Debug Your Application

8. Let's Debug Your Application

Remote debugging

The DevTools API

Live reloading NW.js

Troubleshooting common issues

Summary

9. Taking Your Application to the Next Level

9. Taking Your Application to the Next Level

NW.js boilerplates

Development ideas

Resources and tutorials

Summary

Index

Index

Customer Reviews

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The manifest file

As we have seen in previous chapters, the manifest file is essential for the functioning of the application. Inside package.json are stored the general indications on how the application should be handled by NW.js. Let's start by taking a look at a minimal manifest file:

{
  "main": "index.html",
  "name": "My Application"
}

The preceding code is probably the minimum configuration required by NW.js, but there are many customizations possible. We can see all the possibilities listed here:

main: This denotes the path of the main file to open when the project gets evaluated by NW.js.
name: This indicates the unique name of the application. It's important that it is unique as it is also used to determine the name of the data path, which is the folder that will contain all the data of the application (for example, database, cache, and so on). It cannot contain spaces but only alphanumeric characters in addition to the _, -, and . characters.
version: This is the application version...

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