Django/AngularJS/Electron Application

Setup

Prior to developing, you may need to run setup.py.

This requires:

• Python 3.4
• Node.js (for npm)

The setup script installs:

• virtualenv
• bower
• lessc

For the server, this will:

• initialize a virtual environment
• update the environment PIP to the latest version,
• perform Django migrations
• create a Django super user

For the client, this will:

• initialize NPM and node_modules/.
• initialize Bower and bower_components/.

Running

Once the development environment is setup, the application can be started by running run.py. This should start a Django server and an Electron app. The Django server can be reached in a browser at the address http://localhost:8080/.

Building

The build process currently involves:

• Renders distinct HTML index files for the Web and Electron applications.
• Creating an imports.less file for client style definitions.
• Compiling the site.less into a final site.css file.

If --electron is specified, the Electron client binary package is built instead.

Packaging the Electron Client Application

The build.py script can be invoked with the --electron option to build the Electron client application binary package. This builds a binary package named by the client/package.json metadata file.

python build.py --electron

The packaging of an Electron app into a binary (such as .exe on Windows) can be done by using the electron-packager tool. This is installed by setup.py with the command:

npm install electron-packager -g

When used, this tool creates a directory such as django-angular-electron-win32-x64/ in the current working directory. This directory would contain a similarly named django-angular-electron.exe executable. The tool can be used as:

electron-packager .\client "django-angular-electron" --platform=win32 --arch=x64

• The --platform option can be one or more of darwin, linux, mas, win32 (comma-delimited if multiple). It defaults to the host platform.
• The --arch option can be one or more of ia32, x64, armv7l, arm64, mips64el (comma-delimited if multiple). Defaults to the host architecture.