A simple file browser

Now, let's take what we've learned about files and Node to do something that truly (and hopefully) no web page can; let's directly browse the entire hard disk of your personal computer! To make this possible, we'll use two powerful recent additions to the JavaScript and Node family: Electron and Vue.js.

Start out at your terminal with commands like these:

$ mkdir hello_files
$ cd hello_files
$ npm init
$ npm install -S electron

The default answers are fine, except for the entry point—instead of index.js, type main.js. When you're done, you should have a package.json file like this:

{
  "name": "hello_files",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "description": "A simple file browser using Node, Electron, and Vue.js",
  "main": "main.js",
  "dependencies": {
    "electron": "^1.7.9"
  }
}

Now, let's take a look at these three commands:

$ ./node_modules/.bin/electron --version
$ ./node_modules/.bin/electron
$ ./node_modules/.bin/electron .

Try the first to ensure that npm got a working copy...