vite-plugin-electron-renderer

Support use Node.js API in Electron-Renderer

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In short, vite-plugin-electron-renderer is responsible for polyfilling Electron, Node.js built-in modules.

Install

npm i vite-plugin-electron-renderer -D

Usage

1. This just modifies some of Vite's default config to make the Renderer process works.

import renderer from 'vite-plugin-electron-renderer'

export default {
  plugins: [
    renderer(),
  ],
}

2. Using the third-part C/C++, esm package in the Renderer process.

import renderer from 'vite-plugin-electron-renderer'

export default {
  plugins: [
    renderer({
      resolve: {
        // C/C++ modules must be pre-bundle
        serialport: { type: 'cjs' },
        // `esm` modules only if Vite does not pre-bundle them correctly
        got: { type: 'esm' },
      },
    }),
  ],
}

By the way, if a module is marked as type: 'cjs', the plugin just loads it in using require(). So it should be put into dependencies.

API (Define)

renderer(options: RendererOptions)

export interface RendererOptions {
  /**
   * Explicitly tell Vite how to load modules, which is very useful for C/C++ and `esm` modules
   * 
   * - `type.cjs` just wraps esm-interop
   * - `type.esm` pre-bundle to `cjs` and wraps esm-interop
   * 
   * @experimental
   */
  resolve?: {
    [module: string]: {
      type: 'cjs' | 'esm',
      /** Full custom how to pre-bundle */
      build?: (args: {
        cjs: (module: string) => Promise<string>,
        esm: (module: string, buildOptions?: import('esbuild').BuildOptions) => Promise<string>,
      }) => Promise<string>
    }
  }
}

Examples

• quick-start

How to work

Load Electron and Node.js cjs-packages/built-in-modules (Schematic)

 ┏————————————————————————————————————————┓                 ┏—————————————————┓
 │ import { ipcRenderer } from 'electron' │                 │ Vite dev server │
 ┗————————————————————————————————————————┛                 ┗—————————————————┛
                 │                                                   │
                 │ 1. Pre-Bundling electron module into              │
                 │    node_modules/.vite-electron-renderer/electron  │
                 │                                                   │
                 │ 2. HTTP(Request): electron module                 │
                 │ ————————————————————————————————————————————————> │
                 │                                                   │
                 │ 3. Alias redirects to                             │
                 │    node_modules/.vite-electron-renderer/electron  │
                 │    ↓                                              │
                 │    const { ipcRenderer } = require('electron')    │
                 │    export { ipcRenderer }                         │
                 │                                                   │
                 │ 4. HTTP(Response): electron module                │
                 │ <———————————————————————————————————————————————— │
                 │                                                   │
 ┏————————————————————————————————————————┓                 ┏—————————————————┓
 │ import { ipcRenderer } from 'electron' │                 │ Vite dev server │
 ┗————————————————————————————————————————┛                 ┗—————————————————┛

Dependency Pre-Bundling

In general. Vite will pre-bundle all third-party modules in a Web-based usage format, but it can not adapt to Electron Renderer process especially C/C++ modules. So we must be make a little changes for this.

// 👉 https://github.com/electron-vite/vite-plugin-electron-renderer/blob/v0.13.0/src/optimizer.ts#L139-L142
const _M_ = require("serialport");

export default (_M_.default || _M_);
export const SerialPort = _M_.SerialPort;
// export other members ...

dependencies vs devDependencies

Classify	e.g.	dependencies	devDependencies
Node.js C/C++ native modules	serialport, sqlite3	✅	❌
Node.js CJS packages	electron-store	✅	✅
Node.js ESM packages	execa, got, node-fetch	✅	✅ (Recommend)
Web packages	Vue, React	✅	✅ (Recommend)

Why is it recommended to put properly buildable packages in devDependencies?

Doing so will reduce the size of the packaged APP by electron-builder.