OpenPaaS uses ElectronJS to provide the users a desktop client.

Modules should follow some rules to be able to work using Electron.

URL prefixing

When serving the application from a server, there is obviously real problem on what is the server… On the contrary, on a desktop application, the application should know the URL of the server. OpenPaaS supports different ways of doing so.

Make your Restangular instances managed

Most of the server calls are run through Restangular. We provide a system to make a module’s restangular instance aware of the server URL.

Here is the code before :

angular.module('great.module')
  .factory('greatModuleAPI', function(Restangular) {
    return Restangular.withConfig(function(RestangularConfigurer) {
      RestangularConfigurer.setBaseUrl('/great/api');
      RestangularConfigurer.setFullResponse(true);
    });
  });

The module have to use the manageRestangular method of the httpConfigurer service.

Here is the Electron compatible code:

angular.module('great.module')
  .factory('greatModuleAPI', function(Restangular, httpConfigurer) {
    var restangularInstance = Restangular.withConfig(function(RestangularConfigurer) {
      RestangularConfigurer.setFullResponse(true);
    });

    // I tell httpConfigurer to manage the base URL of my restangular instance
    httpConfigurer.manageRestangular(restangularInstance, '/great/api');

    return restangularInstance;
  });

We can see two main differences between the code before and after:

1. we don’t use the native restangular.setBaseUrl() method anymore
2. we call httpConfigurer.manageRestangular() with the module’s restangular instance, and the base URI of the module (which is the same we used to set using RestangularConfigurer.setBaseUrl(…)).

Fix your $http (and other) calls

For a vast variety of reasons, modules may not use Restangular. In that case, the httpConfigurer service provides a nifty getUrl() method to help the developer setting the right final URL.

Here is the code before:

angular.module('great.module')
  .factory('generateJwtToken', function($http) {
    return function() {
      return $http.post('/api/jwt/generate');
    };
  });

and the code after:

angular.module('great.module')
  .factory('generateJwtToken', function($http, httpConfigurer) {
    return function() {
      return $http.post(httpConfigurer.getUrl('/api/jwt/generate'));
    };
  });

Here, we only return the result of httpConfigurer.getUrl() instead of directly setting the URI.