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From Scratch

You can create an Amber project from scratch using crystal init app.

Also see creating a project or library.

$ crystal init app myapp
      create  myapp/.gitignore
      create  myapp/.editorconfig
      create  myapp/LICENSE
      create  myapp/README.md
      create  myapp/.travis.yml
      create  myapp/shard.yml
      create  myapp/src/myapp.cr
      create  myapp/src/myapp/version.cr
      create  myapp/spec/spec_helper.cr
      create  myapp/spec/myapp_spec.cr
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/main/myapp/.git/

Add Amber dependency

First you require to add the amber shard dependency in your shard.yml file:

name: myapp
version: 0.1.0

authors:
  - Foo Bar <[email protected]>

targets:
  myapp:
    main: src/myapp.cr

crystal: 0.24.2

license: MIT

dependencies:
  amber:
    github: amberframework/amber
    version: 0.7.2

Then execute shards install :

$ shards install
Fetching https://github.com/amberframework/amber.git
Fetching https://github.com/amberframework/router.git
Fetching https://github.com/amberframework/cli.git
Fetching https://github.com/mosop/optarg.git
Fetching https://github.com/mosop/callback.git
Fetching https://github.com/mosop/string_inflection.git
Fetching https://github.com/elorest/compiled_license.git
Fetching https://github.com/jeromegn/kilt.git
Fetching https://github.com/amberframework/micrate.git
Fetching https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal-db.git
Fetching https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal-mysql.git
Fetching https://github.com/will/crystal-pg.git
Fetching https://github.com/stefanwille/crystal-redis.git
Fetching https://github.com/jwaldrip/shell-table.cr.git
Fetching https://github.com/jeromegn/slang.git
Fetching https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal-sqlite3.git
Fetching https://github.com/phoffer/inflector.cr.git
Fetching https://github.com/amberframework/teeplate.git
Installing amber (0.7.2)
Installing amber_router (0.0.3)
Installing cli (0.7.0)
Installing optarg (0.5.8)
Installing callback (0.6.3)
Installing string_inflection (0.2.1)
Installing compiled_license (0.1.3)
Installing kilt (0.4.0)
Installing micrate (0.3.1)
Installing db (0.5.0)
Installing mysql (0.4.0)
Installing pg (0.14.1)
Installing redis (1.9.0)
Installing shell-table (0.9.2)
Installing slang (1.7.1)
Installing sqlite3 (0.9.0)
Installing inflector (0.1.8)
Installing teeplate (0.5.0)

Create project structure

All Amber's projects have a directory structure. Basically you need a common file tree (unless you use a Minimal Configuration).

.
├── config
│   ├── application.cr
│   └── routes.cr
└── src
    ├── controllers
    │   └── application_controller.cr
    └── myapp.cr

First you need a config/folder with an application.cr file, also see configuration.

config/application.cr

require "amber"

require "../src/controllers/**"

Secondly a routes.cr file with pipelines and routes blocks, also see: routing.

config/routes.cr

Amber::Server.configure do |app| pipeline :web do # plug PipeName.new end

routes :web do # get "/", SomeController, :some_action end end

Then a basic setup (without views nor models) requires an application_controller.cr file inside src/controllers directory.

src/controllers/application_controller.cr
Crystal
class ApplicationController < Amber::Controller::Base
end

Finally you need to call Amber::Server and all your project in your main myapp.crfile.

src/myapp.cr

require "../config/*"

Amber::Server.start

Build and run your project

To compile your project use shards build myappand run the executable with bin/myapp.

$ shards build myapp
Dependencies are satisfied
Building: myapp
$ bin/myapp 
06:52:37 Server     | (INFO) Amber 0.7.2 serving application "Amber_app" at http://localhost:3000
06:52:37 Server     | (INFO) Server started in development.
06:52:37 Server     | (INFO) Startup Time 00:00:00.000273000

That's it!, now you're ready to create any basic project from scratch without Amber CLI.

Local CLI

As additional step you can compile an amber CLI inside your project using:

crystal build lib/amber/src/amber/cli.cr -o bin/amber -s

Then use bin/amber to do scaffolding, run migrations and more.