Embedding Additional Files

You may need to include additional files in your application bundle that aren’t part of your frontend (your frontendDist) directly or which are too big to be inlined into the binary. We call these files resources.

To bundle the files of your choice, you can add the resources property to the bundle object in your tauri.conf.json file.

See more about tauri.conf.json configuration here.

resources expects a list of strings targeting files or directories either with absolute or relative paths. It supports glob patterns in case you need to include multiple files from a directory.

Here is a sample to illustrate the configuration. This is not a complete tauri.conf.json file:

tauri.conf.json

{
  "bundle": {
    "resources": [
      "/absolute/path/to/textfile.txt",
      "relative/path/to/jsonfile.json",
      "resources/**/*"
    ]
  }
}

Alternatively the resources config also accepts a map object if you want to change where the files will be copied to. Here is a sample that shows how to include files from different sources into the same resources folder:

tauri.conf.json

{
  "bundle": {
    "resources": {
      "/absolute/path/to/textfile.txt": "resources/textfile.txt",
      "relative/path/to/jsonfile.json": "resources/jsonfile.json",
      "resources/**/*": "resources/"
    }
  }
}

Note

In Tauri’s permission system, absolute paths and paths containing parent components (../) can only be allowed via "$RESOURCE/**". Relative paths like "path/to/file.txt" can be allowed explicitly via "$RESOURCE/path/to/file.txt".

Source path syntax

In the following explanations “target resource directory” is either the value after the colon in the object notation, or a reconstruction of the original file paths in the array notation.

• "dir/file.txt": copies the file.txt file into the target resource directory.
• "dir/": copies all files and directories recursively into the target resource directory. Use this if you also want to preserve the file system structure of your files and directories.
• "dir/*": copies all files in the dir directory non-recursively (sub-directories will be ignored) into the target resource directory.
• "dir/**: throws an error because ** only matches directories and therefore no files can be found.
• "dir/**/*": copies all files in the dir directory recursively (all files in dir/ and all files in all sub-directories) into the target resource directory.
• "dir/**/**: throws an error because ** only matches directories and therefore no files can be found.

Accessing files in Rust

In this example we want to bundle additional i18n json files that look like this:

de.json

{
  "hello": "Guten Tag!",
  "bye": "Auf Wiedersehen!"
}

In this case, we store these files in a lang directory next to the tauri.conf.json. For this we add "lang/*" to resources as shown above.

On the Rust side, you need an instance of the PathResolver which you can get from App and AppHandle:

tauri::Builder::default()
  .setup(|app| {
    // The path specified must follow the same syntax as defined in
    // `tauri.conf.json > bundle > resources`
    let resource_path = app.path().resolve("lang/de.json", BaseDirectory::Resource)?;

    let file = std::fs::File::open(&resource_path).unwrap();
    let lang_de: serde_json::Value = serde_json::from_reader(file).unwrap();

    // This will print 'Guten Tag!' to the terminal
    println!("{}", lang_de.get("hello").unwrap());

    Ok(())
  })

#[tauri::command]
fn hello(handle: tauri::AppHandle) -> String {
    let resource_path = handle.path().resolve("lang/de.json", BaseDirectory::Resource)?;

    let file = std::fs::File::open(&resource_path).unwrap();
    let lang_de: serde_json::Value = serde_json::from_reader(file).unwrap();

    lang_de.get("hello").unwrap()
}

Accessing files in JavaScript

This is based on the example above.

Note that you must configure the access control list to enable any plugin-fs APIs you will need as well as permissions to access the $RESOURCE folder:

src-tauri/capabilities/default.json

{
  "$schema": "../gen/schemas/desktop-schema.json",
  "identifier": "main-capability",
  "description": "Capability for the main window",
  "windows": ["main"],
  "permissions": [
    "path:default",
    "event:default",
    "window:default",
    "app:default",
    "resources:default",
    "menu:default",
    "tray:default",
    "fs:allow-read-text-file",
    "fs:allow-resource-read-recursive"
  ]
}

Note

Here we use fs:allow-resource-read-recursive to allow for full recursive read access to the complete $RESOURCE folder, files, and subdirectories. For more information, read Scope Permissions for other options, or Scopes for more fine-grained control.

import { resolveResource } from '@tauri-apps/api/path';
import { readTextFile } from '@tauri-apps/plugin-fs';

const resourcePath = await resolveResource('lang/de.json');
const langDe = JSON.parse(await readTextFile(resourcePath));
console.log(langDe.hello); // This will print 'Guten Tag!' to the devtools console