Setting / Retrieving Document State

[markusmoenig]

I need to set the edited state of a document so that I can show a dialog on an close event. Under Mac I can use BrowserWindow.setDocumentEdited(), but it seems this is not implemented on Windows ?

For me, isDocumentEdited() always returns false under Windows.

Even if setDocumentEdited() actually does not something visually under Windows, should it not at least store the state ? If not, how to store the state under Windows ?

[MarshallOfSound]

The setDocumentEdited API is purely for displaying the appropriate file icon on macOS. Windows does have a similar concept, if you want to prompt your user to save the file if they've made changes you will have to implement it yourself in the close event and your own stored boolean somewhere

[markusmoenig]

If it is purely for displaying the file icon, why does isDocumentEdited() exist ? The naming of these functions give you the impression that this is a valid solution for storing the document state.

[MarshallOfSound]

@markusmoenig They directly map to the native API's

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nswindowcontroller/1534261-setdocumentedited?language=objc
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsdocument/1515091-isdocumentedited

It is documented that these two methods are only supported on macOS https://github.com/electron/electron/blob/master/docs/api/browser-window.md#winsetdocumenteditededited-macos

[markusmoenig]

Ok ok. Thanks for the links.

Is there an official way to store a value inside a BrowserWindow ? Or just do something like window.docState = true ? No idea where to store this correctly.

[MarshallOfSound]

@markusmoenig Each window has an ID, you can use that to map information. Vaguely something like this would work

const window = new BrowserWindow();
const dataStore = {}
dataStore[window.id] = { edited: false }

[markusmoenig]

Ok, that would work, thanks a lot.

[teddy-mczieuwa]

 const window = new BrowserWindow();
 const dataStore = {}
 dataStore[window.id] = { edited: false }

@MarshallOfSound This looks promising, but I am confused as to which is the best way to access the dataStore object on the renderer process from main process. would i have to use ipc or is there another way?

[teddy-mczieuwa]

So I did this and it works fine for me. Would it give me any issues?

let newWindow = new BrowserWindow({
    minWidth: 800, minHeight: 600, show: false,
    backgroundColor:'#ccc', additionalArguments:'edited'
  })

  Object.defineProperty(newWindow, 'documentEdited', {
    value:false,
    configurable:true,
    enumerable:true,
    writable:true

  })
})

I now use it like I would use isDocumentEdited() by setting the value of documentEdited = true when needed.