Last Friday, Brendan Dahl landed SpiderNode integration into Positron. Now, when you run an Electron app in Positron, the app’s main script runs in a JavaScript context that includes the Node module loader and the core Node modules.

The hello-world-server test app demonstrates an Electron BrowserWindow connecting to a Node HTTP server started by the main script. It’s similar to the hello-world test app (a.k.a. the Electron Quick Start app), with this added code to create the HTTP server:

// Load the http module to create an HTTP server.
var http = require('http');

// Configure our HTTP server to respond with Hello World to all requests.
var server = http.createServer(function (request, response) {
  response.writeHead(200, {"Content-Type": "text/plain"});
  response.end("Hello World from node " + process.versions.node + "\n");
});

The main script then loads a page from the server in an Electron BrowserWindow:

const electron = require('electron');
const app = electron.app;  // Module to control application life.
const BrowserWindow = electron.BrowserWindow;  // Module to create native browser window.
…
var mainWindow = null;
…
// This method will be called when Electron has finished
// initialization and is ready to create browser windows.
app.on('ready', function() {
    // Create the browser window.
    mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({width: 800, height: 600});

    // and load the index.html of the app.
    mainWindow.loadURL('http://localhost:8000');
    …
});

Which results in:

The simplicity of that screenshot belies the complexity of the implementation! It requires SpiderNode, which depends on SpiderShim (based on ChakraShim from node-chakracore). And it must expose Node APIs to the existing JavaScript context created by the Positron app runner while also synchronizing the SpiderMonkey and libuv event loops.

It’s also the first example of using SpiderNode in a real-world (albeit experimental) project, which is an achievement for that effort and a credit to its principal contributors, especially Ehsan Akhgari, Trevor Saunders, and Brendan himself.

Try it out for yourself:

git clone https://github.com/mozilla/positron
cd positron
git submodule update --init
MOZCONFIG=positron/config/mozconfig ./mach build
./mach run positron/test/hello-world-server/

Or, for a more interesting example, run the basic browser app:

git clone https://github.com/hokein/electron-sample-apps
./mach run electron-sample-apps/webview/browser/

(Note: Positron now works on Mac and Linux but not Windows, as SpiderNode doesn’t yet build there.)