Accessing filesystem in Angular 2 app using Electron

Question

I know that Angular 2 is run on a web browser, which does not have access to the file system.

However, I\'m using Electron as my front-end, and also running the app

Answer 1

As I understand it, you build the application with Webpack.

You can expose all Node modules via the externals array in your webpack config.

module.exports = {
   "externals": {
      "electron": "require('electron')",
      "child_process": "require('child_process')",
      "fs": "require('fs')",
      "path": "require('path')",
      ...
   }
}

Since they are provided through the Webpack externals, one does not have to require them but use them with imports.

import * as fs from 'fs'

You can read more about this problem in my article.