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Quick start for developers

This short tutorial will show you how to create codehooks projects and spaces using the command line interface (CLI). Check out the concepts page for a more in-depth introduction. To use the Studio to create projects, check out this quickstart.

Install the CLI​

Install the Codehooks command line interface (CLI), this lets you fully manage your projects from the command line.

npm i -g codehooks

You need Node.js to install the CLI.

Use 'Dev containers' to set up your codehooks development environment

Our CLI requires use of the terminal window, which can sometimes be challenging especially for Windows users. Check out our blog post about how to set up a dev container for simplified and more consistent codehooks.io development environment on all platforms.

Sign up and Log in​

Next you need to sign up / log in to your account (it's totally free), in this example we use a Github account. Your browser will open and direct you a secure login page, and there you can return to the CLI - logged in.

coho login

Then choose login method, e.g. Github.

Select option below

❯ Use Github
  Use Google
  Exit

Create project​

Lets go forward and create a new project on your account. A project contains the source code for your serverless functions.

coho create myproject

Follow the guide to create a personal or team project type.

Finally change directory to the new project and install the Codehooks standard library.

cd myproject

The coho create command has now created a new project space and generated a unique name for the API, in this example it's named myproject-2b39 and dev. Your account will be the owner of the project. This can be changed later.

Deploy code to an existing project

If you have an existing project you'd like to use, for example created with the Studio application, you can connect and deploy the code to that project using the CLI command coho init instead of coho create.

Create a serverless JavaScript Codehook​

First, in the project directory, install the Codehooks standard open source libraries codehooks-js.

npm i codehooks-js

Next, start your favorite code editor and open the auto generated index.js in your project directory.

index.js
/*
* Auto generated Codehooks (c) example
*/
import {app} from 'codehooks-js'

// test route for https://<PROJECTID>.api.codehooks.io/dev/
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.send('CRUD server ready')
})

// Use Crudlify to create a REST API for any database collection
app.crudlify()

// bind to serverless runtime
export default app.init();

Save the JavaScript file.

TypeScript support​

Codehooks supports TypeScript with strong typing. Just rename the index.js file to index.ts and your're ready to go. The code example below shows the initial code example using TypeScript.

index.ts
/* TypeScript */
import {app, httpRequest, httpResponse} from 'codehooks-js'

// strong typing for request and response
app.get('/', (req: httpRequest, res: httpResponse) => {
  res.send('CRUD server ready')
})

// Use Crudlify to create a REST API for any database collection
app.crudlify()

// bind to serverless runtime
export default app.init();

You are now ready to deploy your project.

Deploy the code to the serverless cloud​

coho deploy

Example output from the deploy command.

Deploying to Project: myproject-2b39 Space: dev
Deployed Codehook successfully! 🙌

You can now test the database CRUD REST API with a sample collection, for example users.

tip

Use the coho info --examples command to find your project name, API tokens and working curl examples.

curl shell command - POST a new user
curl --location 'https://<YOUR-PROJECT-NAME>.api.codehooks.io/dev/users' \
--header 'x-apikey: <YOUR-API-TOKEN-HERE>' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
    "name": "Bill",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "active": true
}'

Example output from the curl test.

{
    "name": "Bill",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "active": true,
    "_id": "6421b3e6a3c762051688edf7"
}

Lets also test a query for the same data we've added.

curl shell command - query users
curl --location 'https://<YOUR-PROJECT-NAME>.api.codehooks.io/dev/users?name=Bill' \
--header 'x-apikey: <YOUR-API-TOKEN-HERE>' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \

Which returns an array of 1 object from the database.

[
    {
        "name": "Bill",
        "email": "[email protected]",
        "active": true,
        "_id": "6421b3e6a3c762051688edf7"
    }
]

Our test shows that the automatic REST API is accessible on the /dev/users route, and we can successfully add and retrieve data from the database to the client.

👏👏