Access Node-Webkit App from other Application

Question

Is it possible to call a function in nodewebkit from an external application?

For example. I would like to decide whether the window is hidden or show through a external application or with applescript.

Answer 1

I'm not familiarized with the applescript language, but is possible between languages that have an implemented library for socket.io

Using socket.io you can behave between applications, socket.io act like an node.js EventEmitter (or pubsub), clients can send events and suscribe to those events in real-time.

For your case you can create a socket.io server with node.js

var app = require('express')();
var http = require('http').Server(app);
var io = require('socket.io')(http);

io.on('connection', function(socket){

  // Listens the 'control-hide' event
  socket.on('control-hide', function () {
      // Emit for all connected sockets, the node-webkit app knows hot to handle it
      io.emit('hide');
  });

  // Listens the 'control-show' event
  socket.on('control-show', function () {
      // Emit for all connected sockets, the node-webkit app knows hot to handle it
      io.emit('show');
  });
});

http.listen(3000, function(){
  console.log('listening on *:3000');
});

And add a socket.io client to your node-webkit application

var socket = require('socket.io-client')('http://localhost:3000'); // I will assume that the server is in the same machine

socket.on('connect', function(){
  console.log('connected');
});

// Listens the 'hide' event
socket.on('hide', function(){
  // hide window
});

// Listens the 'show' event
socket.on('show', function(){
  // show window
});

And for this example I will assume that another javascript application will control the "show" and "hide" operations

var socket = require('socket.io-client')('http://localhost:3000'); // I will assume that the server is in the same machine

socket.on('connect', function(){
  console.log('connected');
});

// sends a 'control-show' event to the server
function show() {
  socket.emit('control-show');
}

// sends a 'control-hide' event to the server
function hide() {
  socket.emit('control-hide');
}