Get Started
Azle helps you to build secure decentralized/replicated servers in TypeScript or JavaScript on ICP. The current replication factor is 13-40 times.
Please remember that Azle is in beta and thus it may have unknown security vulnerabilities due to the following:
- Azle is built with various software packages that have not yet reached maturity
- Azle does not yet have multiple independent security reviews/audits
- Azle does not yet have many live, successful, continuously operating applications deployed to ICP
Installation
Windows is only supported through a Linux virtual environment of some kind, such as WSL
You will need Node.js 20 and dfx to develop ICP applications with Azle:
Node.js 20
It's recommended to use nvm to install Node.js 20:
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.7/install.sh | bash
Restart your terminal and then run:
nvm install 20
Check that the installation went smoothly by looking for clean output from the following command:
node --version
dfx
Install the dfx command line tools for managing ICP applications:
DFX_VERSION=0.21.0 sh -ci "$(curl -fsSL https://internetcomputer.org/install.sh)"
Check that the installation went smoothly by looking for clean output from the following command:
dfx --version
Deployment
To create and deploy a simple sample application called hello_world:
# create a new default project called hello_world
npx azle new hello_world --http-server
cd hello_world
# install all npm dependencies including azle
npm install
# install the azle dfx extension
npx azle install-dfx-extension
# start up a local ICP replica
dfx start --clean
In a separate terminal in the hello_world directory:
# deploy your canister
dfx deploy
If you would like your canister to autoreload on file changes:
AZLE_AUTORELOAD=true dfx deploy
View your frontend in a web browser at http://[canisterId].localhost:8000.
To obtain your application's [canisterId]:
dfx canister id backend
Communicate with your canister using any HTTP client library, for example using curl:
curl http://[canisterId].localhost:8000/db
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{ \"hello\": \"world\" }" http://[canisterId].localhost:8000/db/update