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Thomas
Thomas

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How I built a desktop app with vue in minutes

When it comes to desktop app, electron is a powerful tool. You can build cross-platform applications in one shot.

As I like vue, i've triyed created an application with 'electron-vue' and this is how simple it is !

Let's make a weather app using OpenWeatherMap API

🛠️ Installation

I was using Ubuntu 18.04 and Webstorm IDE. I also like vuetify components so I installed the vuetify/electron repository

Looks like the GitHub repo doesn't exist anymore..

To install the project run

vue init vuetifyjs/electron my-project

cd my-project
npm install
npm run dev
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Now you are ready to go !

the boiler plate

Then to display the weather, i will need :

-Highest temperature
-Lowest temperature
-Humidity

So let's change that page into what we need ! I'm using two Card component, one to search the city and the other one will then display the weather

      <v-card>
        <v-card-text>
          <p>Welcome to my météo app.</p>
          <p>Search for a city to display the weather</p>
          <v-text-field label="City" box v-model="city"></v-text-field>
        </v-card-text>
        <v-card-actions>
          <v-spacer></v-spacer>
          <v-btn primary flat router @click="getWeather">Search</v-btn>
        </v-card-actions>
      </v-card>
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      <v-card v-if="show">
        <v-card-text>
            <v-layout row>
                <v-layout xs6>
                    <v-card-text>
                        <v-spacer></v-spacer>
                        <h1>{{temp.toFixed(2)}}°C</h1>
                        <h1>{{weatherDescription}}</h1>
                    </v-card-text>
                </v-layout>
                <v-layout xs6>
                    <v-card-text>
                        <p><v-icon>fas fa-snowflake</v-icon>Min : {{ tempMin.toFixed(2) }}°C</p>
                        <p><v-icon>fas fa-sun</v-icon>Max : {{ tempMax.toFixed(2) }}°C</p>
                        <p><v-icon>fas fa-tint</v-icon>Humidity : {{ humidity }} %</p>
                    </v-card-text>
                </v-layout>
            </v-layout>
        </v-card-text>
      </v-card>
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💻Requesting the API

I now need to code my getWeather function

I'm using axios to make API requests, I then store the data i want into my app

the API endpoint is '/data/2.5/weather'

  import SystemInformation from './WelcomeView/SystemInformation'
  import axios from 'axios'
  axios.defaults.baseURL = 'http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5'
  export default {
    name: 'welcome',
    components: { SystemInformation },
    data () {
      return {
        city: '',
        country: '',
        weatherDescription: '',
        temp: null,
        tempMin: null,
        tempMax: null,
        humidity: null,
        show: false,
        key: '863668499362fb4884ebd97229f3b26b',
        url: 'http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather'
      }
    },
    methods: {
      open (link) {
        this.$electron.shell.openExternal(link)
      },
      getWeather () {
        axios.get(this.url, {
          params: {
            q: this.city,
            appid: this.key
          }
        }).then(response => {
          this.temp = response.data.main.temp - 274
          this.tempMax = response.data.main.temp_max - 274
          this.tempMin = response.data.main.temp_min - 274
          this.humidity = response.data.main.humidity
          this.weatherDescription = response.data.weather[0].description
          this.show = true
        }).catch(errors => {
          console.log(errors)
        })
      }
    }
  }
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🌟 And that's it !

Simple as a classique Vue js application, I just made a simple cross-plateform application.

my-final app in vue

this was my first electron app, and also my first blog post

I really loved it because i'm able to use the same app on Windows, MacOs and Ubuntu (has i work on ubuntu)

feel free to tell me about stuff i made wrong ore i could have done better, and to share some cool stuff to work on !

Top comments (18)

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phillipstemann profile image
Phillip Stemann

Very exciting, when I run the first line:
vue init vuetifyjs/electron my-project

I get this error:
vue-cli · Failed to download repo vuetifyjs/electron: Response code 404 (Not Found)

What can I do?

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thomas_ph35 profile image
Thomas

this is the basic repo of electron-vue !
you can use it instead of mine who's dead.

SimulatedGREG / electron-vue

An Electron & Vue.js quick start boilerplate with vue-cli scaffolding, common Vue plugins, electron-packager/electron-builder, unit/e2e testing, vue-devtools, and webpack.


electron-vue

The boilerplate for making electron applications built with vue (pretty much what it sounds like)

forthebadge forthebadge forthebadge

js-standard-style

Build Status

Overview

The aim of this project is to remove the need of manually setting up electron apps using vue. electron-vue takes advantage of vue-cli for scaffolding, webpack with vue-loader, electron-packager or electron-builder, and some of the most used plugins like vue-router, vuex, and so much more.

Check out the detailed documentation here.

Things you'll find in this boilerplate...



you will just have to install vuetify (wich I didn't tryed because i already had it)

if you want to check my code feel free to fork my repo :

Thomas-Philippot / Desktop-meteo

Windows - Mac OS - Linux app to display in time weather using Electron with vue/vuetifyjs and openweathermap.org API

Desktop Météo

An electron-vue project As the project is mainly for testing purpose This project use a private API but the access token is writen in the source code. This is not a good way to do it, remeber to store these kind of data in .env file.

Build Setup

# install dependencies
npm install

# serve with hot reload at localhost:9080
npm run dev

# build electron application for production
npm run build

# run unit & end-to-end tests
npm test


# lint all JS/Vue component files in `src/`
npm run lint

This project was generated with electron-vue@fad1966 using vue-cli. Documentation about the original structure can be found here.


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thomas_ph35 profile image
Thomas

Has I said, the GitHub repo doesn't existe anymore..
I will try to find a New one 😊

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masihfathi profile image
masih fathi

dose async/await and es6+ work in this environment?

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cthulhudev profile image
CthulhuDev

Yes it does. When bootstrapping a vue application, babel comes with it. So you can use async/await and ES2018 shenanigans

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thomas_ph35 profile image
Thomas

I thinks you can use AsyncData method from vue but I didn't tryed.
It was not usefull in this use case. 😀

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qm3ster profile image
Mihail Malo

asyncData is a Nuxt-specific thing that runs before mounting.
Normal Vue only has synchronous data() to initialize.

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thomas_ph35 profile image
Thomas

Ho my bad 😇 I guess I'm totaly used to nuxt 😆

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qm3ster profile image
Mihail Malo

Who are you calling a ho :o

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thomas_ph35 profile image
Thomas

Sorry ?
it was an Onomatopeia 😱 I didn't mean to be mean at all😮

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abdurrahmaanj profile image
Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer

excellent travail 🎉

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tyler_potts_ profile image
Tyler Potts ✌️

That is really cool. I was thinking to try this out myself and stumbled across your post.

Was there anything that you found could be an issue combining electron and vue?

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thomas_ph35 profile image
Thomas

Nothing at all, it was exactly like building a web app using regular vue and vuetify 👌😁

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Sloan, the sloth mascot
Comment deleted
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thomas_ph35 profile image
Thomas

Already answered, please read the comments 😊

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pwnchaurasia profile image
Pawan Chaurasia

I found that and was trying to delete and my internet stoped working. and found your comment when it came back. Sorry

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thomas_ph35 profile image
Thomas

No problem ! 😊 Happy you found a solution 😉

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mkenzo_8 profile image
mkenzo_8

Electron rocks!!! 🛤️🚀