Watch hotel config port about hotelier

[macav]

Solved in v0.2.0, please install it manually :)

[macav]

Hi, thanks for opening the issue! Yes, I had this in mind. Not sure what is the path on Windows, so this would need to be checked as well.
If you manage to look into it first, i'd be very glad for the PR!

[JSn1nj4]

I know in the Windows environment, at least from Command Prompt, the path is like this:

%HOMEPATH%\.hotel\conf.json

Windows wraps its environment vars in %.

I'll see when I can open a PR. May not be until the weekend, but I'll try to get one open.

[JSn1nj4]

Some notes, especially for me. This will be my first time actually contributing to a Node-based project.

1. Getting the home path
2. path.join
3. path.normalize
4. Start in api.js

[JSn1nj4]

@macav I noticed in src/api.js:22 that an empty string is returned during development. May I ask why? Asking as someone who doesn't have much Node or Electron experience.

Also, after reading the code more closely, does this app use SSR? If not, I would be confused about how you have access to process.env client-side. But since the src/api.js file does have access to that, maybe I did add my code in the right location.

[macav]

Yes, this is due to the fact that I had problems with CORS and Hotel. There's a reverse proxy set up, so that all the request in development to the same origin go to localhost:2000 - https://github.com/macav/hotelier/blob/master/package.json#L35

It's not really SSR, but there's electron which is running in the background and react app which is the client. you should have access to process.env from anywhere. One thing maybe would help, there's a file which makes some electron API accessible to the client, so that electron & react app can communicate via ipcRenderer... this is used for example to open the URL of the hotel server: https://github.com/macav/hotelier/blob/master/public/preload.js
And yes, the tests would be nice :)

Hopefully this helps you a bit.

[JSn1nj4]

Ok. Will look at that file then. Thanks!

[JSn1nj4]

Just letting you know I haven't given up yet. It's just taking me a while to digest everything.

For the most part, I can tell what's going on in electron.js. and I get that I can use the Node API from within preload.js. I still need to learn how to use the ipcMain and ipcRenderer objects, but I think I'm getting there.

[JSn1nj4]

@macav may I ask what part this app is considered part of the "renderer" process?

This is where I'm stuck. I keep coming across information saying I should be able to import Node and Electron modules (such as fs and ipcRenderer ) inside of the renderer process. But trying to import ipcRenderer from Electron results in the following error:

TypeError: fs.existsSync is not a function
(anonymous function)
<path/to/projects/dir>/hotelier/node_modules/electron/index.js:6
  3 | 
  4 | var pathFile = path.join(__dirname, 'path.txt')
  5 | 
> 6 | if (fs.existsSync(pathFile)) {
  7 |   module.exports = path.join(__dirname, fs.readFileSync(pathFile, 'utf-8'))
  8 | } else {
  9 |   throw new Error('Electron failed to install correctly, please delete node_modules/electron and try installing again')

So it's trying to import the Electron module, but it's not able to use the fs module, even when I try to import it before importing Electron.

I've tried using both require and import syntaxes with the same issue.

Current example in src/util.js

Other files tried in:

• src/app.js
• src/index.js

Those last 2 files don't currently have code like what's in util.js. That's just where I've tried to import ipcRenderer from Electron.

[macav]

Hey there.. I think what you're looking for is located here: https://github.com/JSn1nj4/hotelier/blob/feature/read-custom-hotel-port/public/preload.js#L12
You correctly set the hotel port there and you should bind ipcRenderer to window just like it's done for shell. The util.js file is used from the react app and this has no access to the node API

[JSn1nj4]

Ok. So then the React app doesn't have direct access to the renderer. But wouldn't the port value need to be accessible to the React app, for instance, in the src/api.js file?

[macav]

no, directly no. Yes, it would be needed for the API, but you can bind the port to window and read it from there. Again, the shell example can be useful here. It's bound in preload.js and then used in https://github.com/macav/hotelier/blob/master/src/utils.js#L10.

[JSn1nj4]

@macav I keep getting undefined though when I try to read it from there. Same for ipcRenderer.

If I could read the hotel port directly from the window, I wouldn't need ipcRenderer, but both of those (when attached to window via the preload script) are undefined within the React app. I've also confirmed this by console.log(window) within the React app and manually inspecting the logged Window object, just in case I was missing something.

From the examples I've looked at, I think this has to do with the React app not having access to the renderer. My understanding is that attaching values to the window object that way gives the renderer access to those values.

I'm going to see if there's another way to handle it (maybe exposing a rest API endpoint for the React app to call, if that's possible with Electron).

[JSn1nj4]

I'm sorry to say that I think I need to give this up. I've spent a good deal of time trying to find a workaround, but I think I'm too green to work this deep in an Electron project.

Thanks for the pointers though. I have definitely learned a bit by fiddling with this project.

[macav]

@JSn1nj4 Thanks for your help anyway! Could you please open a WIP PR with what you have? Maybe it will be useful and i could continue from that..

[JSn1nj4]

@macav sure. I can't do it right this minute, but I'll make sure to do it the first chance I get.