electron-dialog-external

Directly use the core functions from Electron's dialog module.
This is really useful for small Node.js applications and scripts.

npm install electron-dialog-external

const dialog = require('electron-dialog-external');

(async function() {
    await dialog.showOpenDialog(options);
    await dialog.showSaveDialog(options);
    await dialog.showMessageBox(options);
})();

dialog.showOpenDialogSync(options);
dialog.showSaveDialogSync(options);
dialog.showMessageBoxSync(options);
dialog.showErrorBox(title, content)

Please refer to the official Electron docs for concrete usage instructions. Everything behaves exactly the same <3.

This package is built on Electron v11.2.0.

What is not supported?

• passing an instance of BrowserWindow as argument
• passing an instance of NativeImage as argument

Performance Tip

If you have the choice, prefer the Promise functions over the Sync functions, because all sync functions have a delay of about 1 second before the function returns.In contrast, the Promise functions resolve immediately.

I suspect the delay has something to do with the deconstruction of the Electron process, which apperently takes longer if we called a dialog Sync function. Oddly enough, Electron's dialog.*Sync() function alone does not have any delay. And it is not the fault of child_process.spawnSync() either, because child_process.spawn() has the same delay if it runs an Electron process with a dialog.*Sync() call. The delay really has to come from the Electron "Main process" itself, which exits with delay if a dialog.*Sync function was used. Probably, it has something to do with the Event Loop xD.

Examples?

See src/_test.ts. It calls each function with example parameters. You could use that as a starting point ;)

A note on errors

Theoretically the dialog functions should, just like the official functions, never throw an exception (sync functions) or reject (async functions / promises). If it happens, then this is a bug. Please report on the Issues page.

Cue

If you know an easier way to achieve external usage of the dialog module than using child processes, please tell me (Issues page).