nw-init

NW.js Application Initializer

Node plugin for creating scaffolding necessary to start a new NW.js application. This creates the project structure need to build Windows and OSX Applications. It also will package your application into a sexy and simple setup installer DMG or EXE. Initialized application automatically include Bootstrap and JQuery.

Installing

Install this node module globally.

npm install -g nw-init

Usage

Give a path to the new project folder. If no path is set, it will install in the current working directory.

nw-init ~/Desktop/MyNewApp

Dependencies

In order to build your new application, there are some external global dependencies that are required.

grunt

Grunt is required to build. See the getting started guide.

npm install -g grunt-cli

makensis

makensis is required to create the Windows setup executable. Can be installed with brew:

brew install makensis

appdmg

node-appdmg is required to create the OS X DMG installer image.

npm install -g appdmg

wine

On OSX if building for Windows, Wine needs to be installed to create the application icon. Can be installed with brew

brew install wine

Building

The Grunt project is an extension of the project-grunt and all those grunt tasks can be used on your app. In addition, there are several Grunt tasks that are specific and useful to building your NW.js application:

Task	Description
app[:(platform)]	Builds a release version of the NW.js app
app-debug[:(platform)]	Builds a debug version of the NW.js app
package[:(platform)]	Create the installers
open:(platform)	Open the application, requires a platform.

• platform Valid types include osx32, osx64, win32, win64

Examples

Build the application in debug mode and run for OS X 64-bit:

grunt app-debug:osx64 open:osx64

Build the release application and package to all installers:

grunt app package

Conditional Compiling

In addition to project-grunt's DEBUG and RELEASE condititional constants for JavaScript, applications created with nw-init support APP and WEB.

 
if (APP)
{
    // Only app builds will show this code
    var fs = require('fs');
    fs.readFile('data.json', function(err, data){
        data = JSON.parse(data);
        // load a json file with node
    });
}
 
if (WEB)
{
    // Only default builds, like grunt tasks 'build' and 'build:dev'
    $.getJSON('data.json', function(data){
        // load a json file with jQuery
    });
}

Examples

• SpringRollStudio

License

MIT License