Getting started

Before you begin, you'll need to install the Nitric CLI.

brew install nitrictech/tap/nitric

Using the new command

The Nitric CLI's new command provides prompts to scaffold new projects from templates. Here's an example of creating a new project from a template:

nitric new hello-world ts-starter

Navigate to the new project directory and install the dependencies:

cd hello-world

npm install

Your project should now look like this:

+--services/
|  +-- hello.ts
+--node_modules/
|  ...
+--package-lock.json
+--package.json
+--nitric.yaml
+--README.md

Running your app

Nitric provides a local development environment offering emulated versions of cloud services, suitable for local development/testing. You can use the Nitric CLI to start your application and the local environment using the nitric start command.

nitric start

Nitric will automatically run your application using the service start script, this is located in your nitric.yaml.

name: example
services:
  - match: services/*.ts
    start: npm run dev:services $SERVICE_PATH

All the APIs are locally hosted on their own port, which will be displayed in the CLI output as http://localhost:<port_number>.

The output will also show the local dashboard URL, the dashboard will automatically refresh with details about your resources and tools to interact with each of them.

Once the API is registered, you can test the API using any HTTP client, your browser, or the local dashboard:

curl http://localhost:4001/hello/John
Hello John

Making updates

At this point, you can start making changes to services. Start by opening the hello service in your editor and adding a new route to the API:

import { api } from '@nitric/sdk'

const helloApi = api('main')

helloApi.get('/hello/:name', async (ctx) => {
  const { name } = ctx.req.params
  ctx.res.body = `Hello ${name}`
  return ctx
})

// Let's add a 'goodbye' route to the API, like this:
helloApi.get('/goodbye/:name', async (ctx) => {
  const { name } = ctx.req.params
  ctx.res.body = `Goodbye ${name}`
  return ctx
})

After making the change, the new route will be registered and you can test it:

curl http://localhost:4001/goodbye/John
Goodbye John

When you're finished testing, you can stop the application.

Deploying the app

Now that you've implemented a basic API and tested that it works, you can deploy it to one or more cloud platforms. Applications built with Nitric can be automatically deployed and run on multiple cloud providers without any code changes.

The first step is to set up your credentials for the cloud provider.

• AWS
• Azure
• GCP

You'll then need to create a stack that represents your project and a deployment target.

The nitric stack new command below will create a stack named dev that uses the aws provider.

nitric stack new dev aws

Continue by checking your stack file nitric.dev.yaml and adding in your preferred region, such as us-east-1.

Now you can deploy your dev stack with the up command.

nitric up

When the deployment is complete, go to the relevant cloud console and you'll be able to see and interact with your API.

To tear down the stack use the down command:

nitric down

What's next?

• Learn more about APIs
• Learn more about the foundations of Nitric