My Final Project
I built a desktop app for reading Reddit without an internet connection.
Pre-download subreddits to read offline, including posts and their comments.
I built it with Sidhya Tikku who did the design, with the code being written by me.
Demo Link
Link to Code
Backpack Reader
Backpack Reader is a desktop app for downloading and reading Reddit while offline.
Install
First, clone the repo via git. And then install the dependencies with yarn.
$ cd Backpack
$ yarnStarting Development
Start the app in the dev environment.
$ yarn devPackaging for Production
To package apps for the local platform:
$ yarn packageRunning Tests
This project uses Jest as the test runner.
$ yarn test
End to End Tests
Coming soon.
Code Structure/Tech Stack
app/
Main JavaScript code for Backpack Reader. Components are built with React.
Tech Stack:
- React
- Redux
- Jest
Contributions
All contributions, pull requests, and feedback welcome! Roasts of all kinds welcome
Future Plans
- End to End tests.
Authors and Acknowledgement
- Sidhya Tikku - Design work
- Kai Chen - Programming work
See also the list of contributors who participated in this project.
How I built it (what's the stack? did I run into issues or discover something new along the way?)
Built with Electron, React, and Redux. Got more familiar with JavaScript, React, and Yarn along the way.
It was interesting and fun to look at Reddit on one screen and try to recreate its CSS by eyeball on the other.
Not too many fancy libraries were used, most of the code (like the navbar/sidebar) were created from scratch. Mostly using node-fetch for API requests, and node-fs-extra for managing files locally.
One of the challenges that we faced was collaborating. I live in Canada and Sidhya lives in India, so we had to schedule our Zoom calls at late in the night.
Additional Thoughts / Feelings / Stories
If you think this is a cool idea, it would mean the world to us if you gave a star on GitHub!
Top comments (15)
Wow this is awesome, and I have a suggestion as well! Perhaps, when you open Backpack Reader, you could have it automatically play the song "Aries - Racecar". I feel like this would add another dimension of "cool" to this project. Anywho, keep up the great work!
Toodaloo!
Nice job! :)
Thanks Charlie! ;)
I think that this is a really nice idea! Very cool
This is a really cool idea! Nice job.
Thank you, Ryan!
Very Nice!!!!
Nice project. It's good if can be implemented for another social media.
Hey Bayu, this is definitely planned! Thank you for the suggestion.
Super cool :)
Thanks Emilie!
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