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Desktop Application

Normally in Pode you define a server and run it, however if you use the Show-PodeGui function Pode will serve the server up as a desktop application.

Warning

Currently only supported in Windows PowerShell, and PowerShell 7 on Windows due to using WPF.

Setting Server to run as Application

To serve up you server as a desktop application you can just write you Pode server script as normal. The only difference is you can use the Show-PodeGui function to display the application.

The Show-PodeGui function must have a Title supplied - this is the title of the application's window.

The following will create a basic web server with a single page, but when the server is run it will pop up as a desktop application:

Start-PodeServer {
    Add-PodeEndpoint -Address localhost -Port 8080 -Protocol Http

    Show-PodeGui -Title 'Basic Server'

    Add-PodeRoute -Method Get -Path '/' -ScriptBlock {
        Write-PodeViewResponse -Path 'index'
    }
}

The page used is as follows:

<html>
  <head>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/styles/main.css" />
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Hello, world!</h1>
    <p>Welcome to a very simple desktop app!</p>
  </body>
</html>

Simple script to load Application

When you run the server from your terminal, the application will open and the terminal will remain visible. However, you could have a script which opens PowerShell as hidden and launches the server.

The following is a basic example of a .bat file which could be double-clicked to open the application, and then hide the terminal:

powershell.exe -noprofile -windowstyle hidden -command .\you-server-script.ps1
exit

Using Chromium instead of Internet Explorer

The default WPF Browser Element used by Pode is based on the system internal Internet Explorer API, which is also bound to the same Javascript and Webbrowser Limitations as Internet Explorer itself.

To utilize Chromium in WPF, Pode offers support for CefSharp which adds a Chromium Web Element to WPF. In order to switch to CefSharp, either compile or download its precompiled binaries.

Pode will automatically switch to CefSharp, if the binaries are loaded into the Powershell Session before the Pode Module itself gets initialized.

The required packages are the following and can be compiled from scratch or downloaded from the Nuget Repository:

This example shows how to load them:

Import-Module -Name "$PSScriptRoot\lib\cefsharp\CefSharp.dll"
Import-Module -Name "$PSScriptRoot\lib\cefsharp\CefSharp.Wpf.dll"