I have a nodejs app that is acting as a server that's controlling multiple industrial machines and I want to make a dashboard with electron that presents real time data of the various machine's states (this information being stored on the server). How can I establish some sort of connection between my nodejs server and my electron application/dashboard (and update its contents accordingly)?
I have written a similar Electron app, in my case, an app that periodically interrogates an application over the network that is connected to / controls an HF Amateur radio via a raw Socket.
From the electron app's main.js, I start up a service that polls the radio control application over the Socket. In your case, I'm assuming the would be an http client.
When the response comes back, I use Electron's ipcRenderer to push the data from the main electron process to the GUI app, in your case, your dashboard.
The connection code is a bit complex, due to the need to reconnect automatically if the connection is dropped (e.g. the radio is turned off, and then turned back on), but for an example, you can have a look at my repo.