Setup

Prerequisites

Node.js

Install Node.js via a package manager. Follow the installation instructions at the Node.js website

pnpm

pnpm is a fast, disk efficient package manager for JavaScript. It uses a content-addressable filesystem to store packages in a single place on your computer - contrary to npm or yarn, where dependencies are duplicated for each new project. pnpm is also up to 2x faster than npm or yarn.

PosgreSQL

Install PostgreSQL, check the official docs for a method that corresponds to your operating system.

With no configuration, Kretes will be trying to connect to the default PostgreSQL database that is named after your shell username. Go to config/default.json to define the database connection for a different database, e.g.

{
  "db": {
    "user": "dbuser",
    "host": "database.server.com",
    "database": "mydb",
    "password": "secretpassword",
    "port": 3211,
  }
}

Kretes uses node-postgres, check its docs for all available fields.

Kretes CLI

Install Kretes globally so that you can access its CLI anywhere.

npm i -g kretes

Be sure, you have version 1.0.0-alpha.44 or higher. You can check the Kretes version with the -V option:

kretes -V

Generate App Structure

Kretes provides application templates that combine popular libraries, tools and frameworks to even further speed up the process of creating web applications. In this tutorial we are using React.js on the front end, thus we will generate a Kretes application by passing react to the --template parameter.

Create a new applicaiton using the React.js template

kretes new taski.app --template=react

The React.js template configures your application, but also includes a set of libraries that are commonly used when building web applications in React.js:

• React Query is a data synchronization library for React.js that allows to easily integrate front end with back end.
• react-hook-form is a light, performant library for building forms in React.js
• wouter is a tiny (1kB) router for React.js apps that relies on Hooks.
• clsx is a tiny (228B) utility for constructing className strings conditionally.

Start App

Once the project initialization is over, switch to the project directory

cd taski.app

Open it using your editor of choice and start the application in development mode using the start command:

kretes start

From now on you shouldn't need to restart the application while developing. There may be occasional quirks, but I'm working to eliminate them. Feel free to let me know anytime if you stumble on something.

The application starts on the port :5544. In your browser, open http://localhost:5544 to see it.