daml/templates/create-daml-app

Welcome to Create DAML App

This repository contains a template to get started with developing full-stack DAML applications. The demo application covers the following aspects:

1. A DAML model of a simple social network
2. A UI written in TypeScript and React

The UI is developed using React, Semantic UI and its official React integration. The whole project was bootstrapped with Create React App. Regardless of these choices, all DAML specific aspects of the UI client are written in plain TypeScript and the UI framework should hence be easily replaceable.

Getting started

Before you can run the application, you need to install the yarn package manager for JavaScript.

There are two steps to build the project. First, we need to generate TypeScript code bindings for the compiled DAML model. At the root of the repository, run

daml build
daml codegen js .daml/dist/create-daml-app-0.1.0.dar -o daml.js

The latter command generates TypeScript packages in the daml.js directory.

Next, navigate to the ui directory and install the dependencies and build the app by running

cd ui
yarn install
yarn build

The last step is not absolutely necessary but useful to check that the app compiles.

To start the application, there are again two steps. In one terminal in the root directory, start a DAML ledger using

daml start

This must continue running to serve ledger requests.

Then in a second terminal window in the ui directory, start the UI server via

yarn start

This should open a browser window with a login screen. If it doesn't, you can manually point your browser to http://localhost:3000.

A quick tour

You can log into the app by providing a user name, say Alice. For simplicity of this app, there is no password or sign-up required. You will be greeted by a screen indicating that you're not following anyone and that you don't have any followers yet. You can change this by following someone in the upper box, say Bob. After that, let's log out in the top right corner and log in as Bob.

As Bob, we can see that we are not following anyone and that Alice is follwing us. We can follow Alice by clicking the plus symbol to the right of here name.

Deploying to DABL

Deploying create-daml-app to the hosted DAML platform project:DABL is quite simple. Log into your DABL account, create a new ledger and upload your DAML models and your UI.

To upload the DAML models, compile them into a DAR by executing

daml build -o create-daml-app.dar

at the root of your repository. Afterwards, open to the DABL website, select the ledger you want to deploy to, go to the "DAML" selection and upload the DAR create-daml-app.dar you have just created.

To upload the UI, create a ZIP file containing all your UI assets by executing

daml build
daml codegen js .daml/dist/create-daml-app-0.1.0.dar -o daml.js
(cd ui && yarn build && zip -r ../create-daml-app-ui.zip build)

at the root of the repository. Afterwards, select the "UI Assets" tab of your chosen ledger on the DABL website, upload the ZIP file (create-daml-app-ui.zip) you have just created and publish it.

To see your deployed instance of create-daml-app in action, follow the "Visit site" link at the top right corner of your "UI Assets" page.

Next steps

There are many directions in which this application can be extended. Regardless of which direction you pick, the following files will be the most interesting ones to familiarize yourself with:

• daml/User.daml: the DAML model of the social network
• daml.js/create-daml-app-0.1.0/src/User.ts (once you've generated it): a reflection of the types contained in the DAML model in TypeScript
• ui/src/components/MainView.tsx: a React component using the HTTP Ledger API and rendering the main features

Useful resources

TBD

How to get help

TBD