Installation

This page will walk you through the Quickstart installation. As such, the explanations on this page will be very brief to help you get started as quickly as possible.

TIP

If you would like to see a more in-depth, technically-expressive installation guide, then feel free to read the Installation setup page.

Database

First and foremost, Didact requires a database connection, so you need to spin up a new database instance for Didact. See database providers for a list of what databases are supported.

WARNING

A pre-existing database can be used if necessary, but it's my general recommendation to spin up a dedicated database since it will house significant metadata and track its own migrations.

Install Didact CLI

Now you need to install Didact CLI, the central utility tool to help you manage the rest of the Didact platform.

You can install Didact CLI by using the provided installer scripts below:

Windows

iex

Mac

curl

Linux

curl

Ensure that the installation was successful by running the version command below:

didact version

Setup config

Now you need to setup the didact config file, named didact.config.json, and save the database settings to run migrations.

First, run the config init command:

didact config init

Next, set the database provider key and database connection string with the config set command below:

didact config set Database.Provider your-provider-key

didact config set Database.ConnectionString "your-conn-string"

Ensure that your config settings were saved successfully by running the config inspect command:

didact config inspect

Run migrations

Now you need to run migrations against your database instance. Run the following database migration command:

didact migrate

Install engine and UI

Next, install both Didact Engine and Didact UI with the install command:

didact install

Enhance config

To properly use Didact Engine and Didact UI, they each need a few settings saved to the config file, as well. Use the following config set command calls below:

Engine config

• Set the engine name.

didact config set Engine.Name local-engine

TIP

If you would like to provide a special name here, such as your machine name, then you can do so with config contexts. For example, if you wanted your engine name to be your machine name, you would run the following command:

didact config set Engine.Name "${machineName}"

UI config

• Set the engine base URL.

didact config set UI.EngineBaseUrl "my-url"

Start applications

Now that you have installed all Didact applications and setup a minimum config, you need to start the applications. Open two terminal windows, one for Didact Engine and the other for Didact UI, and run the following start commands:

didact start engine

didact start ui

These commands start Didact Engine and Didact UI, respectively, as long-running processes.