app

Opentrons Desktop App

Download | Support

overview

The Opentrons desktop application lets you use and configure your Opentrons personal pipetting robot. This directory contains the application's UI source code. If you're looking for support or to download the app, please click one of the links above.

This desktop application is built with Electron. You can find the Electron wrapper code in the app-shell directory.

developing

To get started: clone the Opentrons/opentrons repository, set up your computer for development as specified in the contributing guide, and then:

# prerequisite: install dependencies as specified in project setup
make install
# change into the app directory
cd app
# install flow-types for testing in development
make install-types
# launch the dev server / electron app in dev mode
make dev

At this point, the Electron app will be running with HMR and various Chrome devtools enabled. The app and dev server look for the following environment variables (defaults set in Makefile):

variable	default	description
NODE_ENV	production	Environment: production, development, or test
PORT	8090	Development server port
SKIP_WIRED_POLL	unset	Turn off polling for directly connected wired robots
OT_APP_INTERCOM_ID	unset	Sets the Intercom application ID
OT_APP_MIXPANEL_ID	unset	Sets the Mixpanel application ID

Note: you may want to be running the Opentrons API in a different terminal while developing the app. Please see the contributing guide for API specific instructions.

stack and structure

The UI stack is built using:

• React
• Redux
• CSS modules
• Babel
• Webpack

Some important directories:

• app/src — Client-side React app run in Electron's renderer process
• API clients (see api/opentrons/server)
  • app/src/rpc - RPC API client
  • app/src/http-api-client - HTTP API client
• app/webpack - Webpack configuration helpers

testing

To run tests:

• make test - Run all tests

Test tasks can also be run with the following arguments:

arg	default	description	example
watch	false	Run tests in watch mode	$ make test-unit watch=true
cover	!watch	Calculate code coverage	$ make test watch=true cover=true

building

If you'd like to build the Electron desktop app, see the app shell's build instructions.

The UI bundle can be built by itself with:

# default target is "clean dist"
make
# build without cleaning
make dist

The UI build process looks for the following environment variables:

variable	default	description
NODE_ENV	production	Build environment: production, development, or test
ANALYZER	unset	Launches the bundle analyzer

For example, if you wanted to analyze the production JS bundle:

ANALYZER=true make