AppImage from electron-builder with file system not working - node.js

Question

I’m using Electron Builder to compile my Electron app to an .AppImage file, and I’m using the fs module to write to an .json file, but it’s not working in the appimage format (it’s working fine when I have the normal version not made with Electron Builder). I can still read from the file.
The code (preload):
setSettings: (value) => {fs.writeFileSync(path.join(__dirname, "settings.json"), JSON.stringify(value), "utf8")}
The code (on the website):
api.setSettings(settings);
The project: https://github.com/Nils75owo/crazyshit

Answer 1

That's not a problem with AppImage or Electron Builder but with the way you're packaging your app. Since you didn't post your package.json*, I can only guess what's wrong, but probably you haven't changed Electron Builder's default behaviour regarding packing your application.
By default, Electron Builder compiles your application, including all resources, into a single archive file in the ASAR format (think of it like the TAR format). Electron includes a patched version of the fs module to be able to read from the ASAR file, but writing to it is obviously not supported.
You have two options to mitigate this problem: Either you store your settings somewhere in the user's directory (which is the way I'd go, see below) or you refrain from packing your application to an ASAR file, but that will leave all your JavaScript code outside the executable in a simple folder. (Note that ASAR is not capable of keeping your code confidential, because there are applications which can extract such archives, but it makes it at least a little harder for attackers or curious eyes to get a copy of your code.)
To disable packing to ASAR, simply tell Electron Builder that you don't want it to compile an archive. Thus, in your package.json, include the following:
{
// ... other options
"build": {
// ... other build options
"asar": false
}
}
However, as I mentioned above, it's probably wiser to store settings in a common place where advanced users can actually find (and probably edit, mostly for troubleshooting) them. On Linux, one such folder would be ~/.config, where you could create a subdirectory for your application.
To get the specific application data path on a cross-platform basis, you can query Electron's app module from within the main process. You can do so like this:
const { app } = require ("electron"),
path = require ("path");
var configPath;
try {
configPath = path.join (app.getPath ("appData"), "your-app-name");
} catch (error) {
console.error (error);
app.quit ();
}
If you however have correctly set your application's name (by using app.setName ("...");), you can instead simply use app.getPath ("userData"); and omit the path joining. Take a look at the documentation!
For my Electron Applications, I typically choose to store settings in a common hidden directory (one example for a name could be the brand under which you plan to market the application) in the user's home directory and I then have separate directories for each application. But how you organise this is up to you completely.
* For the future, please refrain from directing us to a GitHub repository and instead include all information (and code is information too) needed to replicate/understand your problem in your question. That'd save us a lot of time and could potentially get you answers faster. Thanks!