Oak

A very opinionated kiosk UI application based on electron.

Rationale

Most of the electron project if focused around desktop application development, which is great! But when you are dealing with public computing (ATM machines, airline ticketing, movie theater ticket vendors, etc), you don't really need all the features a traditional desktop application requires. The job of the oak module is to give a really easy way to make a kiosk application with modern web technology, so that it's repeatable, scalable, and easy to rapidly prototype for production.

Install

npm i -g oak

Quick Start

$ oak --help

  Usage: oak [options] <url>

  If you load oak with a script path, no commandline options will apply automatically.

  Options:

    -h, --help                  output usage information
    -V, --version               output the version number
    -b, --background [String]   Hex background color for initial window. Example: #f0f0f0
    -f, --fullscreen [Boolean]  Set the window to full width and height
    -h, --height [Number]       Window height
    -w, --width [Number]        Window width
    -x, --x [Number]            Window X position
    -y, --y [Number]            Window Y position
    -t, --title [String]        Window title
    -t, --ontop [Boolean]       Start window ontop of others
    -k, --kiosk [Boolean]       Kiosk mode
    -D, --display [Number]      Display to use
    -S, --shortcut [List]       Register shortcuts, comma separated. reload,quit
    -u, --useragent [String]    User-Agent string
    -F, --frame [Boolean]       Show window frame
    -s, --show [Boolean]        Show window on start
    -n, --node [Boolean]        Enable node integration
    -i, --insecure [Boolean]    Allow insecure connections (not recommended)
    --sslExceptions [Array]     Bypass SSL security for specific hosts. This uses a host pattern. Example: *.mysite.com
    -c, --cache [Boolean]       Use HTTP cache
    -d, --debugger [Boolean]    Open chrome dev tools on load

You can use any URL you want to simply launch a fullscreen webpage, for example:

oak http://gifdanceparty.giphy.com/

Making an app

oak only requires a couple things to get up and running: A URL, or an index.js file. You can specify a path to your module the same way you can with a URL:

oak path/to/app.js

index.js

The most minimal example, this will launch a fullscreen app, injecting the oak object into the client side:

const oak = require('oak')

// when oak is ready, we can tell it to load something
oak.on('ready', () => {
  // loading takes an options object with a `url`, second parameter is an optional callback
  oak.load({
    url: 'http://www.mywebapp.com'
  }) // or callback)
})

require('oak')

When you launch your app, the oak module is automatically resolved in modules, meaning you don't need to include it in your package.json file. This is similar to the way electron exposes it's own modules privately.

oak.load(options[, callback])

Most of these options are wrapping electron.js BrowserWindow options, but some are specific to our kiosk use-case. This method returns the Window object

• options: Object
  • url: - Not optional
    • String - The url option is the only one required, and will load any valid URI

      // load a local HTML file
      url: 'file://' + join(__dirname, 'index.html')
      
      // load your own webserver
      url: 'http://localhost:8080'
      

    • Function - You can also pass a function to url. The first parameter is a callback which you pass your string to. This is helpful for dynamic page loading, redirecting to another page, or simply passing query parameters.

      url: function (callback) {
        callback('http://localhost:8080/?time=' + Date.now())
      }
      

  • title: String OAK- The window title
  • display: Number 0 - Your display number, and defaults to your main display
  • fullscreen: Boolean true - Set the window to max height and width
  • kiosk: Boolean false - Sets kiosk mode
  • ontop: Boolean true - Set the window to be always on top of others
  • show: Boolean true - Start the window shown, this will also show the window whenever it is reloaded
  • height: Number 1024
  • width: Number 768
  • x: Number 0 - X position
  • y: Number 0 - Y position
  • shortcut Object
    • reload Boolean false - enable CommandOrControl+Shift+R to reload the window
    • quit Boolean false - enable CommandOrControl+Shift+X to close the app
  • background: String #000000 - Hex color of the window background
  • frame: Boolean false - Show window frame
  • scripts: Array path - Local node scripts or modules to load into the window during pre-dom phase. This can be a object with name and path if you want the window.whatever script to be named
  • flags: Array - Chrome launch flags to set while starting the window
  • insecure Boolean false - allow running and displaying insecure content (not recommended at all)
  • sslExceptions Array - Bypass SSL security for specific hosts. This uses a host pattern. Example: *.mysite.com
  • cache Boolean true - Enable HTTP cache flag for chrome
  • userAgent: String - Defaults to 'Oak/' + oak.version
• callback: [Function] - Executed when the ready function has fired

oak properties

oak.ready

Window object

oak.load() returns a Window object with methods and events. Each instance of oak.load() returns a unique object for that window, and the methods are mirrored for both the node side and client (renderer) side.

send(event[, payload])

Send events to the window

• event: String - the event namespace, delimited by .
• payload: Any - whatever data you want to send along Example: window.send('myEvent', { foo: 'bar' })

on(event, callback)

This is an instance of EventEmitter2

• ready - Will emit the ready event, and also execute the optional callback
• reloading - The window is reloading, can be used in tandem with proceed()
  • oldSession - previous session ID
  • newSession - new session ID
• loadFailed - The window load failed
  • opts: Object - original options used
  • err: Error

reload([url])

Reload the window.

• url: String - Optional new URL to load, instead of the previous set URL. This will not overwrite options.

debug()

Toggle the chrome debugger

show()

Show the window

hide()

Hide the window

focus()

Set the desktop focus to this window

Window properties

id

Unique id of that window.

Window events

The window fires events from electrons BrowserWindow and webContents. The only event fired from that set into the renderer is dom-ready.

note: If you do a send of the same event from the renderer side, it will look like the same event coming from electron events. So be careful and watch your namespaces for conflicts!

Examples

Check out the examples folder!

I don't always test my code, but when I do...

We use docker containers for all our production deployments. To get started, you will need to have Docker installed. You can install docker from their website, or on Linux systems, run this script:

  curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | sh
  # add your user to the docker group
  sudo usermod -aG docker $(whoami)

You will also need an X server running (xorg). If you are on OSX, go ahead and follow the steps below to get setup.

On Linux

This example is for debian based systems, you can accomplish the same by getting docker and docker-compose running yourself.

1. Install python-setuptools

    sudo apt-get install -y python-setuptools
   

2. Install pip

    sudo easy_install pip
   

3. Install docker-compose

    pip install docker-compose>=1.8.0
   

4. Allow your X server to allow outside connections. Make sure to disable this after you are finished!

    xhost +
    docker-compose up
   
   

   You should turn off your open xhost after you are finished developing.

    docker-compose down
    xhost -

On OSX

I'm not going to lie... this is a pain in the ass. OSX doesn't have xorg or a build in X server by default. You are going to be using socat to proxy Xquartz via TCP so that you can use your IP address the docker container. It may be easier to start up a VM running ubuntu or debian.

1. Install homebrew

   Homebrew is a easy way to install linux packages on OSX. In your Terminal app:

   /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
   

2. Install socat and python

   • socat will be needed to forward your X server socket, in order to display a window on your desktop.

     brew install socat
     

   • python is useful for a number of reasons, but in our case, a means to get docker-compose. When you install python, you get the pip program along with it.

      brew install python
     

3. Install docker-compose

   Rather than using straight docker commands, we use docker-compose to simplfy orchestrating multiple containers. docker-compose uses a .yml file to describe docker commands and run them.

   pip install docker-compose
   

4. Install XQuartz, which is a X server for OSX. ​

5. Open XQuartz, go to Preferences > Security > Allow connections from network clients. ​

6. In Terminal, run socat to proxy your X server connection via TCP:

    ⁠⁠⁠⁠socat TCP-LISTEN:6000,reuseaddr,fork UNIX-CLIENT:\"$DISPLAY\"
   

   After you run this, it will be waiting for connections, so don't close this Terminal window. ​

7. Edit docker-compose.osx.yml

   Replace the X's with your IP address. This will resolve your socat connection to the container, which is proxying XQuartz.

   environment:
     - DISPLAY=XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:0
   

   If your IP address was 192.168.0.5, the line would be DISPLAY=192.168.0.5:0 . Don't forget the :0 and the end, that specifys that it's the first display, not a port.

8. In your oak directory, run docker-compose -f docker-compse.osx.yml up

On Windows

Sorry but you are a little on your own as far as an X server goes! In the future we may update this readme to provide info for developing on Windows. In the mean time... Cygwin?