Getting started

This guide walks you through setting up Celest on your development machine, and how to create a new project.

Prerequisites

To use Celest in your Flutter app, you need the following prerequisites:

1. Install Flutter (opens in a new tab)
2. Create a new Flutter project (or navigate to an existing one)
3. Download and install the Celest CLI

That's it! You are now ready to start building your backend - all in Dart!

Starting a new Celest project

Start by first creating a new Flutter project. If you have an existing Flutter project, you can use that instead. To start a new Flutter project, go to your console and run the following command.

$ flutter create my_celest_app

Then, navigate to your new Flutter app.

$ cd my_celest_app

Once you are in your Flutter app directory, run the following command to initialize your Celest project.

$ celest start

Once the project is generated, Celest will continue to run in the terminal. A local development environment is spun up as the CLI watches for changes made to your backend, hot-reloading your changes and code-generating a client library automatically.

Your backend lives in the generated celest folder. Every celest folder follows this structure, which helps to keep your backend organized.

my_celest_app/
└── celest/
    ├── functions/                        # Celest Functions folder
    |   └── greeting.dart                 # Example API file
    ├── lib/
    │   │── client.dart                   # Generated client for your Flutter app
    │   ├── models/                       # Custom API models
    |   |   └── person.dart
    │   └── exceptions/                   # Custom API exceptions
    |       └── bad_name_exception.dart
    └── test/                             # Tests for your backend

Next steps

Ready to start building? Choose which Cloud Widget you want to start with: