Configuring auto-update for an Electron app#

This is almost really simple. I used electron/update-electron-app for it, the instructions for which are:

Add it to packages.json with npm i update-electron-app
Make sure your "repository" field in that file points to your GitHub repository
Use GitHub releases to release signed versions of your application
Add require('update-electron-app')() somewhere in your main.js

I added this… and it didn’t work (#106).

Then I spotted this recipe in the manual setup instructions for the update.electronjs.org server that it uses:

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const server = 'https://update.electronjs.org'
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const feed = `${server}/OWNER/REPO/${process.platform}-${process.arch}/${app.getVersion()}`

I ran that in the Electron debugger, swapping in simonw/datasette-app as the OWNER/REPO and got this URL:

https://update.electronjs.org/simonw/datasette-app/darwin-x64/0.2.0

Which returned this:

No updates found (needs asset matching *{mac,darwin,osx}*.zip in public repository)

It turns out your asset filename needs to match that pattern!

I renamed the asset I was attaching to the release to Datasette-mac.app.zip and the auto-update mechanism started working instantly.

How it works#

That update URL is interesting. If you hit it with the most recent version of the software (0.2.1 at time of writing) you get this:

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~ % curl -i 'https://update.electronjs.org/simonw/datasette-app/darwin-x64/0.2.1'
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HTTP/1.1 204 No Content
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Server: Cowboy
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Content-Length: 0
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Connection: keep-alive
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Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2021 03:54:47 GMT
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Via: 1.1 vegur

But if you tell it you are running a previous version you get this instead:

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~ % curl -i 'https://update.electronjs.org/simonw/datasette-app/darwin-x64/0.2.0'
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HTTP/1.1 200 OK
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Server: Cowboy
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Connection: keep-alive
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Content-Type: application/json
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Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2021 03:55:19 GMT
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Content-Length: 740
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Via: 1.1 vegur
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{"name":"0.2.1","notes":"- Fixed bug where application would not start without a working internet connection. [#115](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/115)\r\n- The \"Debug -> Open Chromium DevTools\" menu item no longer shows an error if no windows are focused. [#113](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/113)\r\n- Fixed bug where the `datasette-leaflet` plugin could be uninstalled despite being automatically re-installed. [#118](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/118)\r\n- Time limit for facet calculations increased from 1 second to 3 seconds. [#114](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/114)","url":"https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/releases/download/0.2.1/Datasette-mac.app.zip"}

Which pretty-prints to:

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{
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  "name": "0.2.1",
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  "notes": "- Fixed bug where application would not start without a working internet connection. [#115](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/115)\r\n- The \"Debug -> Open Chromium DevTools\" menu item no longer shows an error if no windows are focused. [#113](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/113)\r\n- Fixed bug where the `datasette-leaflet` plugin could be uninstalled despite being automatically re-installed. [#118](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/118)\r\n- Time limit for facet calculations increased from 1 second to 3 seconds. [#114](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/114)",
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  "url": "https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/releases/download/0.2.1/Datasette-mac.app.zip"
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}