electron-comlink

An adapter to allow Electron to use Comlink to communicate between the background and renderer processes.

Installation

npm install electron-comlink

Usage

Communicate from the background to the renderer

``js
// In the renderer process
const Comlink = require("comlink");
const {ElectronMessageAdapter} = require("electron-comlink");
const endpoint = new ElectronMessageAdapter(window, electron.ipcRenderer);

const exposed = {
doSomething() {
return "Did something in the renderer";
},
};

Comlink.expose(exposed, endpoint);
`

`js
// In the background process
const Comlink = require("comlink");
const {ElectronMessageAdapter} = require("electron-comlink");

const win = new BrowserWindow({width: 800, height: 600});
const endpoint = new ElectronMessageAdapter(win, electron.ipcMain);

const link = Comlink.wrap(endpoint);
await link.doSomething(); // Returns "Did something in the renderer"
`

Communicate from the renderer to the background

`js
// In the background process
const Comlink = require("comlink");
const {ElectronMessageAdapter} = require("electron-comlink");

const win = new BrowserWindow({width: 800, height: 600});
const endpoint = new ElectronMessageAdapter(win, electron.ipcMain);

const exposed = {
doSomethingElse() {
return "Did something in the background";
},
};

Comlink.expose(exposed, endpoint);
`

`js
// In the renderer process
const Comlink = require("comlink");
const {ElectronMessageAdapter} = require("electron-comlink");
const endpoint = new ElectronMessageAdapter(window, electron.ipcRenderer);

const link = Comlink.wrap(endpoint);
await link.doSomethingElse(); // Returns "Did something in the background"
`

Gotchas

- The transferList argument to .postMessage() is not currently supported.
- If you try to message the renderer before it has started up, then you could
be await`ing forever