web-view

This library provides Rust bindings for the webview library to allow easy creation of cross-platform Rust desktop apps with GUIs based on web technologies.

It supports two-way bindings for communication between the Rust backend and JavaScript frontend.

It uses Cocoa/WebKit on macOS, gtk-webkit2 on Linux and MSHTML (IE10/11) or EdgeHTML (with the edge feature) on Windows, so your app will be much leaner than with Electron.

For usage info please check out the examples and the original readme.

Contributions and feedback welcome :)

Notes:

Requires Rust 1.30 stable or newer.

Suggestions:

If you like type safety, write your frontend in Elm or PureScript *, or use a Rust frontend framework that compiles to asm.js, like yew.
Use parcel to bundle & minify your frontend code.
Use inline-assets to inline all your assets (css, js, html) into one index.html file and embed it in your Rust app using include_str!().
If your app runs on windows, add an icon to your Rust executable to make it look more professional™
Use custom npm scripts or just or cargo-make to automate the build steps.
Make your app state persistent between sessions using localStorage in the frontend or rustbreak in the backend.
Btw, instead of injecting app resources via the js api, you can also serve them from a local http server (e.g. bound to an ephemeral port).
Happy coding :)

* The free PureScript By Example book contains several practical projects for PureScript beginners.

Contribution opportunities:

Create an issue for any question you have
Docs
Feedback on this library's API and code
Test it on non-windows platforms, report any issues you find
Showcase your app
Add an example that uses Elm or Rust compiled to asm.js
Add a PureScript example that does two-way communication with the backend
Contribute to the original webview library: E.g. add HDPI support on Windows
Make it possible to create the webview window as a child window of a given parent window. This would allow webview to be used for the GUIs of VST audio plugins in Rust.

Ideas for apps:

Rust IDE (by porting xi-electron to web-view)
Data visualization / plotting lib for Rust, to make Rust more useful for data science
Crypto coin wallet
IRC client, or client for other chat protocols
Midi song editor, VJ controller
Rust project template wizard: Generate new Rust projects from templates with user-friendly steps
GUI for pijul
Implement Gooey alternative with web-view and clap-rs

Showcase

Feel free to open a PR if you want your project to be listed here!