Dialogs

The familiar browser globals prompt(), alert(), and confirm() work inside ende desktop apps, but instead of reading from the terminal, they show native popup dialogs.

This makes desktop apps feel native without any platform-specific code, and keeps the same API you would write for a browser-side script.

alert(message)

Shows a modal dialog with an OK button. Returns void.

alert("Save complete.");

The current window is the parent: clicking outside the dialog does not dismiss it; the user must click OK.

confirm(message)

Shows a modal dialog with OK and Cancel. Returns boolean: true for OK, false for Cancel.

if (confirm("Discard unsaved changes?")) {
  await closeDocument();
}

prompt(message, defaultValue?)

Shows a modal dialog with a text input plus OK and Cancel. Returns the entered string, or null if the user cancelled.

const name = prompt("New document name:", "Untitled");
if (name !== null) {
  await createDocument(name);
}

When they fire

These functions block the calling code (synchronously) until the user responds. They run on the Ende runtime thread, not the webview, so they do not freeze the rendered UI, but they do pause your handler.

win.addEventListener("menuclick", (e) => {
  if (e.detail.id === "delete") {
    if (confirm("Really delete?")) {
      // … do the deletion
    }
  }
});

If you call them from the webview side (via JavaScript inside the rendered page), the webview's own native dialogs are used instead: window.alert(), window.confirm(), and window.prompt() as the browser implements them. The behavior is similar: a native modal scoped to that webview.

Differences from terminal Ende

In a normal ende run script, these functions read from / write to the terminal: prompt reads a line of stdin, confirm accepts y / n. That terminal behavior would be invisible inside a desktop app, so ende desktop swaps them out for native dialogs without any code change on your part.

File and folder dialogs

Native file-picker and folder-picker dialogs are not yet exposed as a first-class API. Until they are, two workarounds exist:

1. Use the webview's <input type="file">. The webview shows the OS-native picker, and the resulting File object can be sent over a binding for the Ende side to handle:

   <input id="f" type="file" accept=".json">
   <script>
   document.getElementById("f").addEventListener("change", async (e) => {
     const file = e.target.files[0];
     await bindings.handleFile(file.name, await file.arrayBuffer());
   });
   </script>

   win.bind("handleFile", async (name, bytes) => {
     await Ende.writeFile(name + ".bak", new Uint8Array(bytes));
   });

2. Drag-and-drop into the webview. Drop a file onto a <div>, read it with the File API, and pass the bytes through a binding.

A native file-picker API is on the roadmap.

Notifications

System notifications have a dedicated API: the standard Web Notification constructor, callable from your Ende-side code. See Notifications.

Clipboard

A dedicated clipboard API is not yet exposed. Use the Web Clipboard API (navigator.clipboard.readText(), writeText()) from the webview side for now.