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Developer Learn Building a GraphQL API 3.x Create application

Create application

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Create, build and deploy an application from a starter.

Everything you build for XP ships as an application — code, schemas and extensions alike. Ours will hold the GraphQL API.

Create an app

Open a new terminal window and create your first Enonic app by running this command:

enonic create com.example.gqltutorial -r starter-ts -s mysandbox

This command will:

  • use the GitHub repo github.com/enonic/starter-ts as a starter

  • to create an app called com.example.gqltutorial

  • in the directory gqltutorial, with the version set to 1.0.0-SNAPSHOT

  • and link it to mysandbox which you created earlier

starter-ts is Enonic’s maintained TypeScript starter. Starting from a maintained starter rather than from a tutorial repository means you begin with an empty, well-configured application and build the API yourself — which is the point of this guide.
App names matter. XP will not run two apps with the same name in a single instance, so every Enonic tutorial uses a name of its own — this one is com.example.gqltutorial. The name also becomes part of every URL your API is served from, and the rest of the tutorial writes it out in full. If you choose a different name, substitute it wherever that appears.

Project structure

Inside the gqltutorial directory, you should now have a file structure looking something like this:

Selected files from the app code:
src/
 main/
  resources/
   apis/ (1)
   assets/ (2)
   main.ts (3)
   enonic.yaml (4)
   tsconfig.json (5)
 jest/ (6)
build.gradle (7)
package.json (8)
tsdown.config.ts (9)
gradle.properties (10)
1 Server-side APIs. Empty for now — this is where the GraphQL API goes.
2 The starter’s example client-side file. This guide builds a server-side API only, so we will not use this folder.
3 Runs when the application loads. Not needed for this guide.
4 Application descriptor
5 TypeScript configuration for the server-side code
6 Test setup, ready for tests you add later
7 Java and XP library dependencies
8 Node dependencies and the build, lint and test scripts
9 Bundles both the server-side and client-side TypeScript
10 App name, version and the required XP version

The application builds and deploys as it stands — it just does not do anything yet.

Build and deploy

Assuming mysandbox is still running in another terminal window, run these commands:

cd gqltutorial
enonic dev

The last command (dev) will build the app, deploy it to mysandbox, and start continuously watching for changes in the source code, automatically deploying the changes without you having to rebuild/redeploy the app after each change.

The initial build may take a while. Look for these lines to confirm it has completed:

✔ Build complete in 65ms
> Task :deploy
Deploying 'tutorial-graphql.jar' to '/Users/you/.enonic/sandboxes/mysandbox/home/deploy'
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Waiting for changes to input files...

Coming up

Next you’ll build the GraphQL API itself.

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