Peruse

About

An electron web browser. Built to be a basis. Extendable by design.

WebApp Development

Safe uses the RDF compliant WebId system for easily enabling user account management.

You can retrieve the current webId via window.currentWebId;

You can listen for changes via the event emitter, window.webIdEventEmitter, eg:

webIdEventEmitter.on('update', ( webId ) => {
  console.log('an updateId occurred!', webId);
});

Development

There are dev- prefixed releases of Peruse available. These come with both live network and mock network libs, bundled.

By default, opening the app will open Peruse for the mock network (when you're running in a NODE_ENV=dev environment).

Otherwise, there is the option to pass a --live flag to the browser. This will start the browser in a live network mode.

eg, on OSX:

NODE_ENV=dev open Peruse.app --args --live

Debugging

A --debug flag is also available to get extra logs and devtool windows when working with a packaged application.

Additionally, the --preload flag can be passed in order to get the following features preloaded in mock network mode:

• an interactive tool to learn about the browser's SAFE network API, located at safe://api.playground
• Account login credentials, both secret and password being mocksafenetworkdeveloper

NODE_ENV=dev open Peruse.app --args --mock --preload

Compiling

Make sure you have both git and yarn installed.

You need to use node.js version 8.x to build the browser currently.

• git clone https://github.com/joshuef/peruse.git
• cd peruse
• NODE_ENV=dev yarn (NODE_ENV is needed to install mock libs and to tun yarn mock-dev).
• yarn rebuild

And to run dev mode:

• yarn mock-dev

Want to run 'production' variables, but with hot reloading?

• yarn put-live-net-files-for-<windows|osx|linux>
• yarn prod-dev

Note, you'll need a crust.config set for the application. Helper commands are available on osx/linux (not windows yet, sorry! this is only temporary.)

And to package:

• yarn package

The resulting packages are contained within the releases folder.

A packaged application, built in a NODE_ENV=dev, can access either prod or dev networks. prod is the default, or alternatively you can open the application and pass a --mock flag to open and use a mock network.

Build commands

There are a few build commands for various situations:

• yarn mock-dev will run a peruse developer version of the application using MockVault
• yarn prod-dev will run a peruse developer version of the application using the live network.
• yarn build compiles all code, but you shouldn't need to use this
• yarn build-preload will need to be run whenever you change the preload.js file for changes to show up in the browser.

Redux

The core is built around redux for simple state management allowing for easy extensibility.

React

The interface is built in react for simple data flow and clear componentisation.

Webpack

webpack.config.base contains loaders and alias' used across all webpack configs.

There is a prod, config. Alongside renderer configs.

When developing against hot reloading, the vendor setup is used to speed up build times etc.

There are 'dev' mode configs for running against the NODE_ENV=develeopment setup. There are 'live-dev' configs for running against NODE_ENV=production but without needing to package.

Testing

• yarn test runs jest (you have the optional yarn test-watch, too).
• yarn test-e2e runs spectron integration tests (not yet stable).
• yarn lint ...lints...

Logging

Via electron-log: import logger from 'logger', and you can logger.info('things').

Logs are printed to both render console and stdout. Logs are also written to a log file per system.

yarn log-osx will tail the file. Similar commands (as yet untested) exist for linux/windows.

SAFE Network

The safe code is contained within the app/extensions folder. This includes a simple http server with is used to provide the http like functionalities of the safe network.

Currently you need to authenticate against the SAFE Browser to get network access.

Authenticator

Currently, we're using a temp_dist version of the authenticator webapp, prebuilt from the 'beaker-plugin-safe-authenticator'.

• APIs are located in app/extensions/safe/api;
• APIs are located in app/extensions/safe/auth-api;