@meerkapp/electron-bridge

Bridge between Electron main process and PWA renderer for the Meerk warehouse management system. Provides SQLite persistence via a UtilityProcess with a MessageChannel-based IPC API and a SignalDB storage adapter.

Installation

pnpm add @meerkapp/electron-bridge

Note: better-sqlite3 requires native compilation. After installing, run:

npx @electron/rebuild

Usage

Main process

import { app, ipcMain } from 'electron'
import { setupElectronBridge } from '@meerkapp/electron-bridge'

app.whenReady().then(() => {
  setupElectronBridge(app, ipcMain)
  // ...create BrowserWindow etc.
})

Preload script

Point Electron's webPreferences.preload to the bundled preload file:

import { BrowserWindow } from 'electron'
import path from 'path'

new BrowserWindow({
  webPreferences: {
    preload: path.join(
      path.dirname(require.resolve('@meerkapp/electron-bridge')),
      'preload.cjs'
    ),
    contextIsolation: true,
    sandbox: false,
  },
})

Renderer / PWA

import { createSQLiteIPCAdapter, isElectron } from '@meerkapp/electron-bridge'
import { Collection } from '@signaldb/core'

if (isElectron()) {
  const adapter = createSQLiteIPCAdapter<Product, string>(
    '/path/to/products.db',
    'products'
  )

  const products = new Collection({ persistence: adapter })
}

Accessing window.db directly

window.db is exposed by the preload script and provides the full DbApi:

const result = await window.db.checkFileExists({ filePath: '/path/to/file.db' })
if (result.success && result.data?.exists) {
  // ...
}

Native module rebuild

better-sqlite3 is a native Node.js addon and must be compiled against the Electron version in use. Run after pnpm install:

npx @electron/rebuild -f -w better-sqlite3

Add this to your postinstall script to automate it:

{
  "scripts": {
    "postinstall": "electron-rebuild -f -w better-sqlite3"
  }
}