JSX Transformation and ReactComponent Hot-Loading for Electron Apps
npm install electron-jsx-hotloadOne of the nice things about electron is that the code
executed inside the chromium context is still a full-fledged node-style context and
has access to all the nifty things that node and node-modules have to offer.
This enourmous advantage is lost when using most any bundling system such as
browserify or webpack
since these bundle all sources into a single file and replace require with something
else. This means that loading actual node_modules from the actual node_modules
directory (or native) stops working.
At the same time these bundlers also fulfill two other purposes:
* transforming JSX/ES2015 code to actual javascript
* allowing for component hot-reloading
In electron we don't actually want the bundling and messing with require. What
we'd really want is for the transformation of JSX to be transparent and hot-reloading
to just work without messing up other stuff.
Enter electron-jsx-hotload. It creates a new file loader for the standard node
module system. It then transforms these files from JSX to vanilla javascript. It
also analyses the exports of any loaded JSX-module for React.Components and
enables them to be hot-loaded.
If chokidar (peer-dependency) is available and process.env.NODE_ENV is not"production" it also watches the root folder for any changes to JSX files and
hot-swaps them into the window.
How to do this? Just add:
``html`
To the
tag of any electron HTML file. This will allow you to just use:`
require('./my-file.jsx')
to load your JSX-React components. These will also hot-reload if a file-change is
noticed. And best of all, inside your JSX files you can now
any node-module
native or otherwise without depending on shims and worrying that some bun(d|g)ler
has messed with require`.No more web-server to run; no more bundling to be done; full-access to node-modules
Copyright 2017 Philipp Dunkel
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