README
Create Wails apps with the power :muscle: of Elm and the beauty :sparkles: of Tailwind CSS!
Using this template for your next Wails project!
Run the following command:
wails init -n wails-hello-world -t https://github.com/rnice01/wails-template-elm-tailwind
About
This Wails Template is intended to help you get started creating your next Wails app using Elm and Tailwind CSS. Firstly, be sure to take a look at the frontend/src/package.json to see what dependencies will be installed.
I've tried to keep this to a minimum. But Elm needs to use ports in order to call the Go functions for your Wails backend. Which isn't a big deal, you can inline all the ports in the index.html where you init the Elm app. Or have separate JS files that are loaded after the main.js that add ports.
But I like using modules, so I ended up using Webpack.
Maybe Useful Tidbits
:shrug:
package.json
There's a few simple scripts here. The gist is Webpack is used to handle any .js or .elm files and the Tailwind CLI handles
all the CSS. When running wails dev Webpack and the Tailwind CLI go into watch mode, webpack:dev and tailwind:dev are run.
Alternatively, wails build will run webpack:prod and tailwind:prod.
frontend/src/Main.elm
This is the main (hence the name) development area for the frontend area of the app. The "glue" part to hook up Wails to Elm are through
ports. The Greet example can be found in frontend/src/js/app.js. This is where I have it configured to initialize the Elm app and add ports
to allow Elm to reach out into the JS world in order to invoke Go functions and then recieve data back.
frontend/src/assets/main.css
This is just a requirement for Tailwind CSS. The way Tailwind knows which styles to add to the dist/main.css is by looking through
any files that end with .elm in frontend/src/.
This is configured in frontend/src/tailwind.config.js. So if you're wanting to move stuff around, be sure to update that file if you find yourself adding classes to your Elm files and are not seeing the expected style changes.
This file gets copied over to frontend/dist/assets but it's not required, I just have a script in package.json that recursively copies everything from frontend/src/assets to frontend/dist/assets when Wails starts up, and I'm too lazy to try to figure out how to exclude that one file.
Live Development
To run in live development mode, run wails dev in the project directory.
That's it! Enjoy hot reloading with Elm and TailwindCSS!
Note: The frontend/src/assets folder only gets copied once, when the dev server starts. I personally didn't need it to auto sync, since I don't change fonts/images often. There are some good options on npmjs for having the assets folder "watched" if you want it to behave like the Elm and CSS changes.
Building
To build a redistributable, production mode package, use wails build.
All feedback (create an issue) and PRs are welcome!
お願いします！ :bow:
