Quick Start Guide

In this short guide, you'll learn key concepts and experience the Encore workflow. It should only take about 5 minutes to complete and by the end you'll have an API running in Encore's free development Cloud (Encore Cloud).

To make it easy to follow along, we've laid out a trail of croissants to guide your way. Whenever you see a 🥐 it means there's something for you to do.

1. Install the Encore CLI

To develop with Encore, you need the Encore CLI. It provisions your local environment, and runs your local development dashboard complete with tracing and API documentation.

🥐 Install by running the appropriate command for your system:

2. Create your app

🥐 Create your app by running:

$ encore app create

If this is the first time you're using Encore, you'll be asked if you wish to create a free account. This is needed when you want Encore to manage functionality like secrets and handle cloud deployments (which we'll use later on in the tutorial).

🥐 Continue by picking a name for your app and select the Hello World template.

This will create an example application, with a simple REST API, in a new folder using the app name you picked.

Let's take a look at the code

Part of what makes Encore different is the simple developer experience when building distributed systems. Let's look at the code to better understand how to build applications with Encore.

🥐 Open the hello.go file in your code editor. It's located in the folder: your-app-name/hello/.

You should see this:

// Service hello implements a simple hello world REST API.
package hello

import (
	"context"
)

// This is a simple REST API that responds with a personalized greeting.
//
//encore:api public path=/hello/:name
func World(ctx context.Context, name string) (*Response, error) {
	msg := "Hello, " + name + "!"
	return &Response{Message: msg}, nil
}

type Response struct {
	Message string
}

As you can see, it's all standard Go code except for a few lines specific to Encore's Backend Framework.

One such element is the API annotation:

//encore:api public path=/hello/:name

This annotation is all that's needed for Encore to understand that the Go package hello is a service, and the World function is a public API endpoint.

To create more services and endpoints, you simply create new Go packages and define endpoints using the //encore:api annotation. If you're curious, you can read more about defining APIs.

Encore.go provides several other declarative ways of using backend primitives, such as databases, Pub/Sub, and scheduled tasks. All defined in your application code.

3. Start your app & Explore the Local Development Dashboard

🥐 Run your app locally:

$ cd your-app-name # replace with the app name you picked
$ encore run

You should see this:

That means your local development environment is up and running! Encore takes care of setting up all the necessary infrastructure for your applications, even including databases and Pub/Sub.

Open the Local Development Dashboard

You can now start using your Local Development Dashboard.

🥐 Open http://localhost:9400 in your browser to access it.

The Local Development Dashboard is a powerful tool to help you move faster when you're developing new features.

It comes with an API explorer, a Service Catalog with automatically generated documentation, and powerful observability features like distributed tracing.

Through the Local Development Dashboard you also have access to Encore Flow, a visual representation of your microservice architecture that updates in real-time as you develop your application.

Call your API

🥐 While you keep the app running, call your API from the API Explorer:

You can also open a separate terminal to call your API endpoint:

$ curl http://localhost:4000/hello/world
{"Message": "Hello, world!"}

If you see this JSON response, you've successfully made an API call to your very first Encore application. Well done, you're on your way!

Review a trace of the request

You can now take a look at the trace for the request you just made by clicking on it in the right column in the local dashboard.

With such a simple API, there's not much to it, just a simple request and response.

However, just imagine how powerful it is to have tracing when you're developing a more complex system with multiple services, Pub/Sub, and databases. (Learn more about Encore's tracing capabilities in the tracing docs.)

4. Make a code change

Let's put our mark on this API and make our first code change.

🥐 Head back to your code editor and look at the hello.go file again. If you can't come up a creative change yourself, why not simply change the "Hello" message to a more sassy "Howdy"?

🥐 Once you've made your change, save the file.

When you save, the daemon run by the Encore CLI instantly detects the change and automatically recompiles your application and reloads your local development environment.

The output where you're running your app will look something like this:

Changes detected, recompiling...
Reloaded successfully.
INF registered endpoint endpoint=World path=/hello/:name service=hello
INF listening for incoming HTTP requests

🥐 Test your change by calling your API again.

$ curl http://localhost:4000/hello/world
{"Message": "Howdy, world!"}

Great job, you made a change and your app was reloaded automatically.

Now you're ready to head to the cloud!

5. Deploy your app

Generating Docker image

You can either deploy by generating a Docker image for you app using:

$ encore build docker MY-IMAGE:TAG

This will compile your application using the host machine and then produce a Docker image containing the compiled application. You can now deploy this anywhere you like. Learn more in the self-host docs.

Deploy using Encore Cloud Platform

Optionally, you can use Encore Cloud Platform to automatically deploy your application. It comes with built-in free development hosting, and for production offers fully automated deployment to your own cloud on AWS or GCP.

🥐 To deploy, simply push your changes to Encore:

$ git add -A .
$ git commit -m 'Initial commit'
$ git push encore

Encore Cloud will now build and test your app, provision the needed infrastructure, and deploy your application to a staging environment.

After triggering the deployment, you will see a URL where you can view its progress in the Encore Cloud dashboard. It will look something like: https://app.encore.cloud/$APP_ID/deploys/...

🥐 Open the URL to access the Encore Cloud dashboard and check the progress of your deployment.

You can now use the Cloud Dashboard to view production traces, connect your cloud account, integrate with GitHub, and much more.

What's next?

• Check out the REST API tutorial to learn how to create endpoints, use databases, and more.
• Join the friendly community on Discord to ask questions and meet other Encore developers.