So you want to create some serialport magic within an electron app? Right on, that sounds like you're creating something pretty amazing for the desktop!

In the past this scenario has been a pretty tough feat to achieve, however with the convergence of NodeJS and iojs into NodeJS 4.x, the road to serialport fun for desktop apps is a much shorter and more enjoyable one.

The following instructions are designed with Linux and OSX operating systems in mind.

Important note: if you have installed NodeJS version 4.x or greater, and are using at least electron-prebuilt version 34.0.1, you may not need all of the steps below anymore. In a lot of cases, simply running npm install serialport within your electron application directory, and requiring/using serialport as you usually do should work just fine!

Let's do this.

Steps for success

Make sure you're on NodeJS version 4.0 or higher.

I'm going to assume you have already installed electron-prebuilt for your machine. If not, run:

npm install -g electron-prebuilt

Next, set up your electron app boilerplate if you haven't already. This is essentially creating the following files in an empty directory:

package.json

main.js

index.html

See the electron quick start docs for how to set these files up.

Ok! Now let's install serialport. Run this from the root directory of your app:

npm install --save serialport

You'll notice that a node_modules dir will appear, with serialport within. So far so good. At this point, you could try requiring serialport within your electron's index.html file and see if it works as expected. If it doesn't, never fear, let's try the additional steps below!

We gotta rebuild serialport to work with electron. To do this, we need to install electron-rebuild:

npm install --save-dev electron-rebuild

The last step is to run electron-rebuild, once again, just in the root directory of the app:

./node_modules/.bin/electron-rebuild -$(electron -v)

A quick test dropped into index.html would look like this:

<script> var sp = require('serialport'); sp.list(function(err, ports) { console.log(ports); }); </script>

Woo! We can now run electron and start up our app:

electron .

Uh oh! Do you see the following error in your electron app's console?

Uncaught Error: Cannot find module '~/my-electron-app/node_modules/serialport/build/serialport/v2.0.2/Release/node-v46-darwin-x64/serialport.node'

This be an unfortunate issue. But this is pretty easy to fix for now :)

If you rename the directory within Release to what the console output is expecting, you're right as rain and it'll find the serialport.node file correctly. Have a look in the Release directory to see what the child directory was named instead, and rename it.

Example:

mv ~/my-electron-app/node_modules/serialport/build/serialport/v2.0.2/Release/electron-v34.0.1-darwin-x64 ~/my-electron-app/node_modules/serialport/build/serialport/v2.0.2/Release/node-v46-darwin-x64

Try running your electron app again, or refresh it with Cmd/Ctrl + R. You should see a bunch of ports listed within an array in your console this time! Sweeeeeet.

Looks like @stevekinney and I are no longer NodeJS desktop app frenemies.

Have fun!