Installation

AdonisJS is a Node.js framework, and hence it requires Node.js to be installed on your computer. To be precise, we need at least the latest release of Node.js v14.

You can check the Node.js and npm versions by running the following commands.

# check node.js version

node -v

If you don't have Node.js installed, you can download the binary for your operating system from the official website.

If you are comfortable with the command line, then we recommend using Volta or Node Version Manager to install and run multiple versions of Node.js on your computer.

Creating a new project

You can create a new project using npm init , yarn create or pnpm create . These tools will download the AdonisJS starter package and starts the installation process.

npm init adonis-ts-app@latest hello-world

yarn create adonis-ts-app hello-world

pnpm create adonis-ts-app hello-world

The installation process prompts for the following selections.

Project structure

You can choose between one of the following project structures.

  • web project structure is ideal for creating classic server-rendered applications. We configure the support for sessions and also install the AdonisJS template engine.
  • api project structure is ideal for creating an API server.
  • slim project structure creates the smallest possible AdonisJS application and does not install any additional packages, except the framework core.

Project name

The name of the project. We define the value of this prompt inside the package.json file.

Configure eslint/prettier

Optionally, you can configure eslint and prettier. Both the packages are configured with the opinionated settings used by the AdonisJS core team.

Configure Webpack Encore

Optionally, you can also configure Vite or Webpack Encore to bundle and serve frontend dependencies.

Please do note, AdonisJS is a backend framework and does not concern itself with front-end build tools. Hence the Webpack setup is optional.

Starting the development server

After creating the application, you can start the development server by running the following command.

node ace serve --watch
  • The serve command starts the HTTP server and performs an in-memory compilation of TypeScript to JavaScript.
  • The --watch flag is meant to watch the file system for changes and restart the server automatically.

By default, the server starts on port 3333 (defined inside the .env file). You can view the welcome page by visiting: http://localhost:3333 .

Compiling for production

You must always deploy the compiled JavaScript on your production server. You can create the production build by running the following command:

node ace build --production

The compiled output is written to the build folder. You can cd into this folder and start the server by directly running the server.js file. Learn more about the TypeScript build process 

cd build

node server.js