Application
Working with the ToDesktop API
ToDesktop provides core APIs for interacting with ToDesktop applications.
ToDesktop SDK
The @todesktop/client-core
packages exposes useful functions for directly interacting with your todesktop app. You can install @todesktop/client-core
in the codebase of the web app that you’re converting into a desktop app:
Using the SDK is as simple as importing the desired functionality for use in your desktop app.
platform.todesktop.isDesktopApp
will evaluate to true
if the function is invoked within the context of a desktop app. notification.create
will then create a native notification alert.
Seperate Desktop Logic from Web App Logic
If you only have a small amount of desktop-specific code then it is fine to keep that functionality in the same file as your web app's javascript. However, if you have a lot of desktop-specific code then we recommend separating all of your desktop specific logic into a separate javascript file. This will ensure that the javascript for your web app is as small as possible.
You can add your desktop-specific javascript into a separate file and import it when your app is being run as a desktop app. Here's a simple way to do this:
How It Works
When your desktop application is first loaded, ToDesktop exposes a window.todesktop
object which provides information about the device as well as methods that provide extra features.
Functionality from @todesktop/client-core
communicates with this window.todesktop
object, but also provides safeguards to ensure backwards and forwards compatibility. For example, @todesktop/client-core
may expose functionality which requires a certain desktop app runtime. If it detects that desktop app runtime is not suitable, it will log a warning in the browser instead of throwing an error.
In other words, prefer using @todesktop/client-core
over the window.todesktop
object directly. Additionally, @todesktop/client-core
is strongly-typed which provides for a better developer experience.
Version 1.0.0 Breaking Changes
With version 1.0.0
of @todesktop/client-core
now released, please make note of the following breaking changes:
Updated signature when unsubscribing from listeners
Previously, creating listeners involved managing an eventId and passing it to an off invocation:
Now, every on
invocation will return a unsubscribe function. You can then execute this function to unsubscribe from the listener (note that unsubscribe is a function that returns a Promise
and can thus be awaited):
Naturally, this means we've removed off
and removeEventListener
from our namespace objects:
For the sake of completeness, we've also removed addEventListener
as the on
function is now preferred:
object
namespace
New For version 1.0.0
, we're exposing a new object
namespace. The object
namespace allows you to programmatically control resources that you have defined in the ToDesktop Builder interface. For now, we're including support for controlling trays. See the following for an example:
![ToDesktop Builder interface which showcases the currently-selected tray.](png/tray-image.mt22lzmh.png)
You can find a full recipe here.
releaseMemoryBindings
moved to object namespace
Finally, we've moved releaseMemoryBindings
from the performance namespace to the object namespace. This is particularly useful if you're managing a lot of object references and want to optimize performance.
Before:
After: