ASP.NET Core

This post is another expansion of my Electron.NET sample to show how to prompt the user with a save dialog and write a file to disk. The sample code before any changes can be found here. As with all the posts I have done on Electron.NET the API Demos repo helped out a lot.

For this example, we will be adding an export button to the contact detail page that will export the contact as JSON.

Dialog Controller

Following how the API Demo is setup I added a DialogController with the following code.

public class DialogsController : Controller
{
    private static bool saveAdded;

    public IActionResult Index()
    {
        if (!HybridSupport.IsElectronActive || saveAdded) return Ok();

        Electron.IpcMain.On("save-dialog", async (args) =>
        {
            var mainWindow = Electron.WindowManager.BrowserWindows.First();
            var options = new SaveDialogOptions
            {
                Title = "Save contact as JSON",
                Filters = new FileFilter[]
                {
                    new FileFilter { Name = "JSON", 
                                     Extensions = new string[] {"json" } }
                }
            };

            var result = await 
                  Electron.Dialog.ShowSaveDialogAsync(mainWindow, options);
            Electron.IpcMain.Send(mainWindow, "save-dialog-reply", result);
        });

        saveAdded = true;

        return Ok();
    }
}

The setup above tells Electron when it receives a save-dialog request to show the operating system’s save dialog with the options specified. When the user completes the dialog interaction then it is set up so Electron will send out a save-dialog-reply message so anything listing can act on the user’s selection.

The bits with saveAdded is to work around an issue I was having with the dialog being shown multiple times. There is something off about my setup that I haven’t had time to track down, but I felt like even with this one querk this post is still valuable.

Next, I added the following import to the _Layout.cshtml file.

<link rel="import" href="Dialogs">

As I am writing this I am wondering if this could be the cause of my multiple dialog issues? Maybe this should just be on the contact detail page?

Contact Detail Page Changes

The rest of the changes are in the Views/Contacts/Details.cshtml. The first thing I did was add a new div and button at the bottom of the page. Based on the look of the existing page it isn’t the prettiest looking thing, but the look of the UI isn’t really the point of this post. Here is the code for the new div. Make note that the button has a specific ID.

<div>
    <button id="save-dialog" class="btn">Export</button>
</div>

Finally, the following script section was added.

<script>
    (function(){
        const { ipcRenderer } = require("electron");
        const fs = require('fs');
        var model = '@Html.Raw(Json.Serialize(@Model))';

        document.getElementById("save-dialog")
                .addEventListener("click", () => {
            ipcRenderer.send("save-dialog");
        });

        ipcRenderer.on("save-dialog-reply", (sender, path) => {
            if (!path) return;

            fs.writeFile(path, model, function (err) {
                console.log(err);
                return;
            });
        });
       
    }());
</script>

On the server side, the model is converted to JSON and stored which will be used when writing the file. If anyone has a better way of doing this part I would love to hear about it in the comments. I’m referring to this bit of code.

var model = '@Html.Raw(Json.Serialize(@Model))';

Next, a click event is added to the export button which when fired sends a message to show the save dialog defined in the controller.

document.getElementById("save-dialog")
        .addEventListener("click", () => {
                                     ipcRenderer.send("save-dialog");
                                   });

Finally, a callback is added for the message that the user has finished with the dialog that was shown.

ipcRenderer.on("save-dialog-reply", (sender, path) => {
    if (!path) return;

    fs.writeFile(path, model, function (err) {
        console.log(err);
        return;
    });
});

In the callback, if the user entered a path then the JSON for the model is written to the selected path.

Wrapping Up

While writing a contact to JSON might not be the most useful thing in the world the same idea could be used to with the information to a vCard file.

After working on this example I finally feel like I am getting a better hold on how Electron is working. Hopefully, this series is helping you feel the same. The completed code can be found here.

This post is a continuation of my exploration of Electron.NET which started with this post. Today I’m going to take the existing sample project and expand it to include a tray icon. As with the post on customizing the application level menus, this post relied heavily on the Electon.NET API Demos repo.

Add an Icon

The first step I took was to find an icon I wanted to show in the tray area. Since this is just a sample application I didn’t spend a lot of time on this. Once you have your icon it needs to be added to your project. Following the example, in the API Demo, I add an Assets directory to the top level of the project and copied in my Stock-Person.png file. This directory and file need to end up in the output of the builds which can be done by adding the following to the csproj file.

<ItemGroup>
  <None Update="Assets\Stock-Person.png">
    <CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
  </None>
</ItemGroup>

In Visual Studio this can be done via the UI, but since I am sticking to VS Code for this project I did the edit manually.

Tray Controller

Add a TrayController to the Controllers directory which will be used to hold all the code needed to add the tray icon. The following is the full class.

public class TrayController : Controller
{
    public IActionResult Index()
    {
        if (!HybridSupport.IsElectronActive ||
            Electron.Tray.MenuItems.Count != 0)
        {
            return Ok();
        }

        var menu = new MenuItem[] {
            new MenuItem 
        { 
          Label = "Create Contact", 
          Click = () => Electron
                            .WindowManager
                        .BrowserWindows
                .First()
                .LoadURL($"http://localhost:{BridgeSettings.WebPort}/Contacts/Create")
        },
            new MenuItem 
        { 
          Label = "Remove", 
          Click = () => Electron.Tray.Destroy()
            }
        };

        Electron.Tray.Show("/Assets/Stock-Person.png", menu);
        Electron.Tray.SetToolTip("Contact Management");

        return Ok();
    }
}

Most of the code above is dealing with building an array of MenuItem which will be options when right-clicking the tray icon. In this case of this sample, there will be two menu items one for creating a contact and the other to remove the tray icon.

Electron.Tray.Show is the bit that actually shows the tray icon and it takes a path for the icon to display and the menu items to show. The last bit is a call to Electron.Tray.SetToolTip which, not surprisingly, sets the tooltip on the tray icon.

Include the tray icon

The final change is to make sure the code to show the tray icon gets run when the application starts. Open the _Layout.cshtml file in the Views/Shared directory. In the head tag add the following which will cause the application to call the Index action on the TrayController.

<link rel="import" href="Tray">

Wrapping Up

As with everything I have tried so far, Electon.NET makes it easy to add a tray icon to your applications. If you are a .NET developer so far I haven’t found any downsides to using Electron.NET. If you have hit any walls with this tool leave a comment. The finished code for this post can be found here.

This post will take the existing sample Electron.NET application used in Create a Desktop Application using ASP.NET Core and Electron.NET and Electron.NET with a Web API and expand it to customize the application menu. I leaned heavily on the Electron.NET API Demos repo to guide how this should be done. The code before any changes can be found here.

Menu Controller

While not a requirement I follow the API Demo example of putting the application level menus in its own controller. Add a MenusController to the Controllers directory. The following is the full class.

public class MenusController : Controller
{
    public IActionResult Index()
    {
        if (HybridSupport.IsElectronActive)
        {
            var menu = new MenuItem[] {
            new MenuItem { Label = "Edit", Submenu = new MenuItem[] {
                new MenuItem { Label = "Undo", Accelerator = "CmdOrCtrl+Z", Role = MenuRole.undo },
                new MenuItem { Label = "Redo", Accelerator = "Shift+CmdOrCtrl+Z", Role = MenuRole.redo },
                new MenuItem { Type = MenuType.separator },
                new MenuItem { Label = "Cut", Accelerator = "CmdOrCtrl+X", Role = MenuRole.cut },
                new MenuItem { Label = "Copy", Accelerator = "CmdOrCtrl+C", Role = MenuRole.copy },
                new MenuItem { Label = "Paste", Accelerator = "CmdOrCtrl+V", Role = MenuRole.paste },
                new MenuItem { Label = "Select All", Accelerator = "CmdOrCtrl+A", Role = MenuRole.selectall }
            }
            },
            new MenuItem { Label = "View", Submenu = new MenuItem[] {
                new MenuItem
                {
                    Label = "Reload",
                    Accelerator = "CmdOrCtrl+R",
                    Click = () =>
                    {
                        // on reload, start fresh and close any old
                        // open secondary windows
                        Electron.WindowManager.BrowserWindows.ToList().ForEach(browserWindow => {
                            if(browserWindow.Id != 1)
                            {
                                browserWindow.Close();
                            }
                            else
                            {
                                browserWindow.Reload();
                            }
                        });
                    }
                },
                new MenuItem
                {
                    Label = "Toggle Full Screen",
                    Accelerator = "CmdOrCtrl+F",
                    Click = async () =>
                    {
                        bool isFullScreen = await Electron.WindowManager.BrowserWindows.First().IsFullScreenAsync();
                        Electron.WindowManager.BrowserWindows.First().SetFullScreen(!isFullScreen);
                    }
                },
                new MenuItem
                {
                    Label = "Open Developer Tools",
                    Accelerator = "CmdOrCtrl+I",
                    Click = () => Electron.WindowManager.BrowserWindows.First().WebContents.OpenDevTools()
                },
                new MenuItem
                {
                    Type = MenuType.separator
                },
                new MenuItem
                {
                    Label = "App Menu Demo",
                    Click = async () => {
                        var options = new MessageBoxOptions("This demo is for the Menu section, showing how to create a clickable menu item in the application menu.");
                        options.Type = MessageBoxType.info;
                        options.Title = "Application Menu Demo";
                        await Electron.Dialog.ShowMessageBoxAsync(options);
                    }
                }
            }
            },
            new MenuItem { Label = "Window", Role = MenuRole.window, Submenu = new MenuItem[] {
                 new MenuItem { Label = "Minimize", Accelerator = "CmdOrCtrl+M", Role = MenuRole.minimize },
                 new MenuItem { Label = "Close", Accelerator = "CmdOrCtrl+W", Role = MenuRole.close }
                 }
            },
            new MenuItem { Label = "Contacts", Role = MenuRole.window, Submenu = new MenuItem[] {
                 new MenuItem { Label = "Create", 
                                Accelerator = "Shift+CmdOrCtrl+C",
                                Click = () => Electron.WindowManager.BrowserWindows.First().LoadURL($"http://localhost:{BridgeSettings.WebPort}/Contacts/Create")
                              }
                 }
            }
        };

            Electron.Menu.SetApplicationMenu(menu);
        }

        return Ok();
    }
}

What the above comes down to is building an array of MenuItem types and then using Electron.Menu.SetApplicationMenu(menu) to pass the array to Electron which handles replacing the default set of menus with the ones defined in the array.

For most of the items that were on the default set of menus all that is needed to add back the default functionality is to set the Role to the function you want. For example in the above for a Copy menu item, we can assign Role to MenuRole.copy and Electron will handle the implementation of a copy without us having to write any additional code.

Navigate to a page from the application menu

One thing I wanted to be able to do was from a menu create a new contact. It was easy enough to add a top-level menu for Contacts and a sub-item for Create. It took me a while, but I finally figured out how to build a URL that would work. The following code is the menu items for the Contacts menu.

new MenuItem { Label = "Contacts", Role = MenuRole.window, Submenu = new MenuItem[] {
     new MenuItem { Label = "Create", 
                    Accelerator = "Shift+CmdOrCtrl+C",
                    Click = () => Electron.WindowManager.BrowserWindows.First().LoadURL($"http://localhost:{BridgeSettings.WebPort}/Contacts/Create")
                  }
     }
}

The ASP.NET Core backend is running on localhost, the key that took me a while to locate was the port. In the end, I found that the port being used can be found using BridgeSettings.WebPort.

Include the menu

The final change that is needed is to make sure the new set of menus get rendered. For the sample application open the _Layout.cshtml file in the Views/Shared directory. Inside the head tag add the following line which will force a call to the MenusController when the application loads.

<link rel="import" href="menus">

Wrapping Up

Customizing the application menu ended up being pretty easy. If I hadn’t wanted to navigate to a specific page I would have been done in no time, but hitting the issue with navigation helped me learn more about how Electron.NET is working. You can check out the finished code here.