This repository provides a quick and easy way to start developing a canister smart contract for the Internet Computer in Motoko. The repository can be used with macOS, Windows or Linux.
To get started with Gitpod, click the button below:
If you rather want to use GitHub Codespaces, click this button instead:
If you prefer running VS Code locally and not in the browser, click "Codespaces: ..." or "Gitpod" in the bottom left corner and select "Open in VS Code" in the menu that appears. If prompted, proceed by installing the recommended plugins for VS Code.
After the IDE has opened, run dfx deploy in the terminal to deploy the frontend and backend.
Click on the first green link at the end of the output to see your canister's frontend in the browser.
To interact with the backend canister, click on the second green link.
NOTE: When developing in GitHub Codespaces, run ./scripts/canister_urls.py and use the links that are shown there.
For interactive development of the frontend canister, you can also start a node server by running npm start.
You can find your canister's frontend running under http://localhost:8080.
If you make changes to the backend canister, remember to call dfx deploy first; it suffices to reload the frontend canister's webpage to reflect the changes you've made.
If your environment was restarted or has been inactive over some time, you might need to run dfx start --background before running dfx deploy.
To run the integration tests for your backend canister, first run dfx build to build the canister, and then ./src/icp_hello_world_motoko_backend/tests/integration_tests.py.
If the canisters have not yet been created, run dfx canister create --all before dfx build.
If you prefer to develop locally, first install Docker and VS Code and start them on your machine. Next, click the following button to open the dev container locally:
If prompted, install the required/recommended plugins for VS Code.
To learn more before you start working on this project, see the following documentation available online:
If you want to start working on your project right away, you might want to try the following commands to familiarize yourself with dfx:
dfx help
dfx canister --help