So I have multiple clients using an app built in electron. The entire application is actually a number of electron windows that talk to each other. When I have an update for the client side code (html/js/css) I have to have them shutdown, and run a utility that downloads from our internal server to update their app. I would like to know if there is a way I can either push new code to the clients (maybe through a socket) to overwrite the old code, or even maybe poll our 'code server' for updates, and then have it automatically update/overwrite existing code.
Is this possible? Is there functionality built in to electron that allows this?
And, if possible, how can it be accomplished? i.e. is there a library I can look at that will help me?? (i found a filesaver.js library, but its not exactly what I need). Thanks in advance.
You can have your Electron app load all code from a server every startup and cache this locally. You can do this by simply hosting your electron code on a web server and pointing Electron at the URL. You could make the app work offline by using a Service Worker.
This isn't a great idea though as code loaded from the internet will have access to all the node APIs. You will have essentially made a DIY botnet and securing it from abuse can be tricky.
You should read Security, Native Capabilities, and Your Responsibility in the Electron docs and be sure you understand the implications.
You can use the built-in autoUpdater of Electron: https://electronjs.org/docs/api/auto-updater
You need a server the autoUpdater can talk to, to download the updates from. The updates are installed after download.
You can host a server by yourself or use a service like https://www.update.rocks/
What you need is electron updater and you can use electron-builder for that.
Related
Parse.com is shutting down. So developers what we gonna do?
It is doing to be maintained as a open source solution?
I have heard something about back4app by Facebook.
Parse has been open sourced here: https://github.com/ParsePlatform
The parse.com is now open sourced as Parse Server, all environment that support node.js and Python can run your own Parse server.
There are a lot of alternatives or where to store your parse server like
Amazon, Bluemix, Azure, Heroku, Ocean, Cloud Engine and more, but for all of then, you have to spend alot of money with Cloud service and MongoDB for Data base (mLab, MongoLab, Compose.IO or other)
If its very importante to continue your app, i will suggest you to use a hosting provider that support Node.js and mongoDB also phyton. I'm using www.a2hosting.com and my app is running perfectly. You can try to download and see the performance. www.angopapo.com (Android)
Hope that helps.
I'm using Parse.com SDK services for my Android app.
I've seen that Parse had released their Android SDK as an open source project on Github on this address.
My app is almost finished, and when I'm uploading it to the Play Store, I don't want to be controlled by Parse.com (I mean that I don't want to be blocked someday, or I don't know that), so I want to move my whole database to my own server that hosted on a secure company.
I've checked the open source project on Github and realized that all I need to use it on my own server is to generate an Application ID and a client key.
So I want to ask if someone knows how to generate an Application ID and a client key of Parse to use it on my own server, or that you maybe knows another way of moving it to my server? And one more question: Today I'm using also Facebook SDK with my app. If I will move my database to my own server, will I still be able to use Facebook SDK on my app?
Thanks!
I have write an article about how to migrate parse to a custom server.
https://medium.com/#jcminarro/run-parse-server-on-your-own-server-using-digitalocean-b2a7d66e1205
There's a massive difference between Parse open-sourcing their SDKs compared to revealing their entire backend architecture and its configuration.
The open-sourced SDKs are essentially wrappers for Parse's REST API along with some convenience functions and logic for natively interpreting the JSON data Parse is transmitting.
At a high level, Parse uses MongoDB for its core database and is entirely hosted using AWS (Amazon Web Services). The entire architecture is highly complex and is not something you could just drag and drop onto your own software stack or hardware backend.
To help give you a better idea of how Parse achieves all of their services, here's an interesting presentation their Dev Ops team gave at an AWS convention. Suffice it to say, hosting the backend services for over 180,000 apps requires a complex infrastructure and that is the "secret sauce" so to speak for Parse and is why Facebook purchased them for over $85 million two years ago.
In my pursuit to write a Chrome packaged app, I am struggling to get my data synchronized to the app so that it can be used in offline mode.
My data lives on a server and I access it trough a restful service in this case I use.net MVC WebApi
What I have tried: Using Breezejs because of the easy offline capabilities ; the problem is that
window.localStorage
is not available in packaged apps, I did tried switching it out for IndexedDB but no luck.
I tried chrome.storage that worked great with the build in sync but it is not a big truck and that is what I need at least a 10tunner.
So my Question; is there a silver bullet that has some XMLHttpRequest implementations, that makes it easier to get data from a restful service, storing it to IndexedDB so that it can be used offline and when going online syncs the changes, that is compatible with packaged apps.
I know I must probably write my own but if someone already went trough all the hoops and complexities of synchronization that can guide me it will be awesome.
Have you looked at using the syncFileSystem API ?
As long as you are happy to sync your data into Google Drive, this api should meet your needs for not implementing sync code yourself and still working offline.
I plan to implement my website (asp.net & sql2008) using windows azure, but I have difficulty to do it because windows azure has not released yet in my location (Indonesia).
Should someone like to share the solution the same with my problem would be appreciated.
The question was asked on MSDN and the answer is that it is not possible. The only solution is to wait for Windows Azure available in your country.
MSDN Forum
Just run your apps on HK or Singapore Windows Azure Public Data Centers, these are the APAC Data Centers for your region.
for testing reasons, I wanted to create an Azure account, and faced the same here in Egypt.
I've made it by remotely logging into one of our U.S-based servers, and registered from there :) If you can't do so, and need this account badly, and don't have such server, try using TOR.
Update: TOR is a proxy-like solution for your internet connection, it will redirect all requests/responses to a node on the TOR network, which consists of volunteers like you and me.
so my solution is simple, we gonna use tor to simulate that you are inside one of the permitted countries, and register your account with ease.
what you gonna need is to install TOR and configure your browser to use it, but my personal recommendation is to install TOR browser bundle, it's TOR+a Browser that is pre-configured to use it.
you gonna find a nice video on the TOR browser bundle page that will give you an overview about it.
give it a try, and tell me what happened.
Everyone remembers google browser sync right? I thought it was great. Unfortunately Google decided not to upgrade the service to Firefox 3.0. Mozilla is developing a replacement for google browser sync which will be a part of the Weave project. I have tried using Weave and found it to be very very slow or totally inoperable. Granted they are in a early development phase right now so I can not really complain.
This specific problem of browser sync got me to thinking though. What do all of you think of Mozilla or someone making a server/client package that we, the users, could run on your 'main' machine? Now you just have to know your own IP or have some way to announce it to your client browsers at work or wherever.
There are several problems I can think of with this: non static IPs, Opening up ports on your local comp etc. It just seems that Mozilla does not want to handle this traffic created by many people syncing their browsers. There is not a way for them to monetize this traffic since all the data uploaded must be encrypted.
Mozilla Weave is capable of running on personal servers. It uses WebDAV to communicate with HTTP servers and can be configured to connect to private servers. I've tried setting it up on my own servers but with no success (Mainly because I'm not very good at working with Apache to configure WebDAV)
I'm hoping Mozilla Weave eventually allows FTP access so I can easily use my server to host my firefox profile.
If you're interested in trying Mozilla Weave on a personal server, there's a tutorial here:
http://marios.tziortzis.com/page/blog/article/setting-up-mozilla-weave-on-your-server/
Browser Sync is up on Google Code now. Doesn't look like anything has been done with it yet though, as far as making it hosted on personal servers/computers.
I've been using the Firefox Scrapbook extension, sync'd via FolderShare. It takes a little setup, but the nice thing is that Scrapbook grabs a local copy of each page so it works offline or if the site goes away.
Not a complete solution to this problem, but I've found FoxMarks to be a really nice bookmark syncing extension.