This library provides Rust bindings for the webview library to allow easy creation of cross-platform Rust desktop apps with GUIs based on web technologies.
It supports two-way bindings for communication between the Rust backend and JavaScript frontend.
It uses Cocoa/WebKit on macOS, gtk-webkit2 on Linux and MSHTML (IE10/11) on Windows, so your app will be much leaner than with Electron.
For usage info please check out the examples and the original readme.
Contributions and feedback welcome :)
Suggestions:
- If you like type safety, write your frontend in Elm or PureScript*, or use a Rust frontend framework that compiles to asm.js, like yew.
- Use parcel to bundle & minify your frontend code.
- Use inline-assets to inline all your assets (css, js, html) into one index.html file and embed it in your Rust app using
include_str!().
- If your app runs on windows, add an icon to your Rust executable to make it look more professional™
- Use custom npm scripts or just or cargo-make to automate the build steps.
- Make your app state persistent between sessions using localStorage in the frontend or rustbreak in the backend.
- Btw, instead of injecting app resources via the js api, you can also serve them from a local http server (e.g. bound to an ephemeral port).
- Happy coding :)
* The free PureScript By Example book contains several practical projects for PureScript beginners.
Contribution opportunities:
- Create an issue for any question you have
- Docs
- Feedback on this library's API and code
- Some functions don't have FFI yet, e.g.
webview_dialog
- Test it on non-windows platforms, report any issues you find
- Showcase your app
- Add an example that uses Elm or Rust compiled to asm.js
- Add a PureScript example that does two-way communication with the backend
- Contribute to the original webview library: E.g. add HDPI support on Windows
- Make it possible to create the webview window as a child window of a given parent window. This would allow webview to be used for the GUIs of VST audio plugins in Rust.
Ideas for apps:
- Rust IDE (by porting xi-electron to web-view)
- Data visualization / plotting lib for Rust, to make Rust more useful for data science
- Crypto coin wallet
- IRC client, or client for other chat protocols
- Midi song editor, VJ controller
- Rust project template wizard: Generate new Rust projects from templates with user-friendly steps
- GUI for pijul
Note: The API can still change. Currently there is only one function (run()) that takes all args, but maybe a builder would be better..