NAME
Valence - Perl interface to electron GUI tool-kit
SYNOPSIS
use Valence;
my $valence = Valence->new;
my $electron = $valence->require('electron');
$electron->attr('app')->on(ready => sub {
my $main_window = $electron->attr('BrowserWindow')->new({
width => 1000,
height => 600,
title => 'My App',
});
$main_window->loadURL('data:text/html,Hello World!'); ## or file://, https://, etc
});
$valence->run; ## enter event loopDESCRIPTION
Electron is chromium-based GUI application framework. It allows you to create "native" applications in HTML, CSS, and javascript. The Valence perl module is an RPC binding that lets you use perl instead of javascript for the electron "main" process. It bundles a javascript module valence.js which is responsible for proxying messages between the browser render process(es) and your perl controller process.
Since valence is a generic RPC framework, none of the electron methods are hard-coded in the perl or javascript bridges. This means that all of the electron docs are applicable and should be used as reference when developing with this module.
NOTE: This module depends on Alien::Electron which will download and install the electron distribution appropriate for your operating system. On linux this depends on having the X11 environment variable set. See the Alien::Electron documention for more details.
DESIGN
ASYNC PROGRAMMING
Like browser programming itself, programming the perl side of a Valence application is done asynchronously. The Valence package depends on AnyEvent for this purpose so you can use whichever event loop you prefer. See the AnyEvent documentation for details on asynchronous programming.
The run method of the Valence context object simply waits on a condition variable that will never be signalled (well you can signal it if you want to, it's in $valence->{cv}) in order to enter the event loop and "sleep forever". run is mostly there so you don't need to type use AnyEvent; AE::cv->recv in simple scripts/examples.
METHODS
The require method initiates a require call in the electron main process and immediately returns a Valence::Object. Any methods that are called on this object will initiate the corresponding method calls in the electron main process and will also themselves return Valence::Objects. The new method is slightly special in that it will use the javascript new function, but it too returns Valence::Objects corresponding to the newly constructed javascript objects:
my $main_window = $electron->attr('BrowserWindow')->new({ title => "My Title" });Valence::Objects are essentially perl-side references to values inside the electron main javascript process. If you destroy the last reference to one of these objects, their corresponding values will be deleted in the javascript process and eventually garbage collected.
As well as calling methods on Valence::Objects, you may also treat them as subs and pass in callbacks that receive the referenced values. This is how you can access javascript values from the perl process. For example:
$main_window->getPosition->(sub {
my $pos = shift;
print "POSITION: x = $pos->[0], y => $pos->[1]\n";
});ATTRIBUTES
Valence::Object has a special attr method which looks up an object attribute and returns a Valence::Object referring to the attribute value. For example:
my $web_contents = $main_window->attr('webContents');
## similar to this JS: var web_contents = main_window.webContents;Eventually I may make attributes accessible via a hash reference overload which would be a slightly nicer syntax.
CALLBACKS
Because interacting with an electron process via valence is done asynchronously, callbacks are used nearly everywhere.
When a perl sub is found in the arguments passed to a method, it is replaced with a stub that will be replaced with a javascript function inside the electron main process. When this javascript function is invoked, an asynchronous message will be sent to the perl process which will trigger the execution of your original sub.
For example, here is how to install a sub that will be executed whenever the main window comes into focus:
$main_window->on('focus', sub { say "FOCUSED" });Note: Due to a current limitation, subs nested inside hashes or arrays will not get stubbed out correctly.
If you are seeing this error when closing the browser window:
EV: error in callback (ignoring): AnyEvent::Handle uncaught error: Broken pipe at...then it means that the electron process has exited but you haven't handled the close event. In this case, typically you just want to exit the perl process also:
$main_window->on(close => sub { exit });DEBUGGING
If you set the VALENCE_DEBUG value to 1 or higher, you will see a prettified dump of the JSON protocol between the perl and electron process
Sending to electron >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
{
"args" : [
"app"
],
"cmd" : "call",
"method" : "require",
"save" : "1"
}
Sending to electron >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
{
"args" : [
"ready",
null
],
"args_cb" : [
[
1,
1
]
],
"cmd" : "call",
"method" : "on",
"obj" : "1",
"save" : "3"
}
...
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Message from electron
{
"args" : [
{}
],
"cb" : 1,
"cmd" : "cb"
}If you set VALENCE_DEBUG to 2 or higher, you will also see the standard error output from the electron process, which includes console.error() output.
IPC
An essential feature of valence is providing bi-directional, asynchronous messaging between your application and the browser render process. It does this over the standard input/standard output interface provided by valence.js. Without this support we would need to allocate some kind of network port or unix socket and start something like an AJAX or websocket server.
BROWSER TO PERL
In order for the browser to send a message to your perl code, it should execute something like the following javascript code:
var ipcRenderer = require('electron').ipcRenderer;
ipcRenderer.send('my-event', 'my message');On the perl side, you receive these messages like so:
my $ipcMain = $electron->attr('ipcMain');
$ipcMain->on('my-event' => sub {
my ($event, $message) = @_;
print $message; ## prints 'my message'
});PERL TO BROWSER
Sending messages from perl to the browser should use code like this:
my $web_contents = $main_window->attr('webContents');
$web_contents->send('my-event' => 'my message');And the javascript side can receive these messages like so:
var ipcRenderer = require('electron').ipcRenderer;
ipcRenderer.on('my-event', function(event, message) {
console.log(message); // prints 'my message'
});IPC READY EVENTS
Before applications can send messages from perl to javascript, the ipcRenderer.on() function must have been called to handle these messages. If you try to send a message before this, it is likely that the message will be delivered to the browser before the handler has been installed so your message will be lost. Applications should have javascript send a message indicating that the communication channel is ready, after which the perl component can begin sending messages to the browser.
For an example of how this is done, see the t/ipc.t test and how the perl side subscribes to a ready IPC message before attempting to send its ping message, and how the t/static/remote.html arranges for javascript to send the ready message after it has installed its ping handler.
TESTS
Currently this software has two tests, load.t which verifies Valence is installed and ipc.t which starts electron and then proceeds to confirm bi-directional transfer of messages between javascript and perl.
BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY
The extent to which this module is backwards-compatible depends on the underlying electron project. The API was changed drastically between electron 0.25.1 and 1.0.1 (corresponding to Valence releases 0.100 and 0.200) so you will have to port your apps over. Sorry about that. The changes are described in more detail in this electron blog post.
Presumably now that electron has reached version 1.0.0 it should now be more stable.
BUGS
A fairly large limitation with the proxying approach is that event handlers cannot prevent the default event from firing (ie with event.preventDefault()). This is because the stub event handler in javascript simply forwards the event trigger and its arguments to the perl process and returns.
As mentioned above, subs nested inside hashes or arrays will currently not properly get stubbed out (but this can be fixed if needed).
Attributes should ideally be accessed via a hash reference overload instead of the attr special method.
new methods cannot yet accept more than one parameter (due to a limitation in valence.js -- how do you do this in JS?).
When a callback function is deleted on the javascript side, the perl-side doesn't know about this so its corresponding callback will remain forever. Is there a way to detect this in JS?
It currently always sends a save (immediately followed by a destroy) even when it doesn't need the value. This is inefficient and should be fixed using wantarray.
Exceptions thrown in the JS side should be handled better (using Callback::Frame).
SEE ALSO
The Valence perl module github repo
The electron project - Official website
Valence was heavily inspired by the thrust project and some parts were ported over from my Thrust module.
AUTHOR
Doug Hoyte, <doug@hcsw.org>
COPYRIGHT & LICENSE
Copyright 2015-2016 Doug Hoyte.
This module is licensed under the same terms as perl itself.
The bundled valence/valence.js library is Copyright (c) 2015-2016 Doug Hoye and is licensed under the 2-clause BSD license.
Electron itself is Copyright (c) 2014-2016 GitHub Inc. and is licensed under the MIT license.