Building a Desktop app using Electron and Vite

JavaScript has grown to become a multi-purpose language that can be used for both front-end and back-end development. With the rise of desktop applications, developers are now looking for ways to build powerful desktop apps using JavaScript. In this article, we will explore how to build a desktop app using JavaScript, Electron, and Vite.

What is Electron and Vite?

Electron is an open-source framework that allows developers to build cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Vite, on the other hand, is a build tool that is designed to optimize and streamline the development of modern web applications.

Building a Calculator Desktop app

For this tutorial, we will be building a simple Calculator desktop app using JavaScript, Electron, and Vite. The app will have a basic user interface with buttons for numbers and arithmetic operations.

Setting up the project

First, we need to create a new project directory and initialize it with a package.json file. We can do this by running the following commands:


mkdir calculator-app
cd calculator-app
npm init -y


Installing Electron and Vite

Next, we need to install Electron and Vite as dependencies for our project. We can do this by running the following commands:


npm install --save-dev electron vite


Creating the app files

Now that we have installed the necessary dependencies, we can create the files for our Calculator app. We will need an index.html file for the user interface and a main.js file for the Electron main process.

Building the user interface

Next, we can create the user interface for our Calculator app by adding buttons for numbers and arithmetic operations. We can use HTML and CSS to style the user interface and JavaScript to handle user interactions.

Setting up the build configuration

Lastly, we need to set up the build configuration for Vite in our package.json file. We can add the following scripts to the package.json file to configure Vite.


{
"scripts": {
"start": "vite",
"build": "vite build"
}
}


Conclusion

In this article, we have explored how to build a desktop app using JavaScript, Electron, and Vite. By following these steps, you can create powerful desktop applications using web technologies. The Calculator app is just a starting point, and you can build on this foundation to create more complex and feature-rich desktop apps.