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Run Your Service on a Development Environment

It's possible to run the code that Amplication generates for your service locally on your machine. This page will guide you through 7 steps to get your service working in a development environment.

Let's get started.

Prerequisites​

Before proceeding with this guide, make sure that you have the following technologies installed:

  • Node.js >= 14
  • NPM >= 6.14.4
  • Docker
info

Also, make sure your service is already connected to a git provider. To do that, please see the Sync With GitHub or Sync With Bitbucket page.

Step 1 - Clone Your Service's Repo​

First, visit the git repo that you're syncing your service to. Clone the repo into a separate folder on your computer.

Step 2 - Install Packages from NPM for the Server​

Your application is using NPM for package management. To install all the necessary packages, follow these steps:

  1. Open a command-line tool
  2. Move to the Server folder
cd server
note

Depending on how you chose a Monorepo or Polyrepo style to push your code to your git repo, you will have to cd into an additional folder.

For example, if your service is named Order Service and you chose a Monorepo style, your server folder would be at apps/order-service.

If you chose the Polyrepo style, there will be a folder named order-service at the root of your repo. In that case, run cd order-service.

  1. Execute npm install or npm i to download and install all the packages
npm install
caution

If you run into issues during the installation step, please see our troubleshooting guide on installation fails.

Step 3 - Start a Docker Container for Your Database​

To start the database, you need to run a Docker container. In the server folder of your service's generated code, you will find a docker-compose.yml file, which is used to define and run your application's services.

To start the database, you need to run a Docker container using the following command:

npm run docker:db
info

The docker-compose.yml file lets you to manage all your service's components in an isolated environment.

Step 4 - Initialize Your Database​

Now you need to create your application schema in the database. To do so, Amplication uses Prisma and the Prisma migrate command.

First, execute the following command in the command-line tool to generate the Prisma client

npm run prisma:generate
caution

If Prisma is denied access to the PostgreSQL DB, please see our troubleshooting guide to fix that.

Now, execute the following command in the command-line tool to generate the schema in the database

npm run db:init
tip

To view the full Prisma commands or any other script, you can open the package.json file and look for the relevant command in the scripts section.

Step 5 - Run Your Server​

That's it, your server is ready! Execute the following command to start your server

npm run start

By default, your server is now available at http://localhost:3000

Open one of these URLs and have fun.

To read more about the technologies and structure of your server, read this article.

Step 6 - Install Packages from NPM for the Admin UI​

Now that your server is ready, you can build and run the Admin UI - a React client with ready-made forms for creating and editing all the data models of your application.

To install all the packages needed for the client, follow these steps:

  1. In the command-line tool, move to the Admin folder. If you are still in the Server folder, execute this command
cd ../admin-ui
note

Depending on the name of your service and your repo style, the name of the admin UI folder can be different.

  1. Execute npm install or npm i to download and install all the packages
npm install

Step 7 - Run the Admin UI​

To run the React application with the Admin UI, execute the following command

npm run start

By default, your client is now available at http://localhost:3001

tip

Make sure that the server is started and running in the background before starting the admin UI. You can run npm run start for the admin UI in a separate shell from the one running the server.