Building your first Pode app

Important

Before starting, ensure you've installed Pode.

The following steps will run you through creating your first Pode app, and give you an overview to some of the basic features.

Setup

First, create a /my-first-pode-app directory, this should be where ever you put your project/learning code.
Open PowerShell, and navigate to the above directory.
Run pode init in the console, this will create a basic package.json file for you - see the CLI reference for more information.
- The init action will ask for some input, leave everything as default (just press enter).

PS> pode init
name (my-first-pode-app):
version (1.0.0):
description:
entry point (./server.ps1):
author:
license (MIT):
Success, saved package.json

In your favourite text editor, create a server.ps1 file within the directory.

REST Server

Although not required, it is recommended to import the Pode module using a maximum version, to avoid any breaking changes from new major versions:

Import-Module -Name Pode -MaximumVersion 2.99.99

To ensure that any errors during the import process are caught and handled appropriately, use a try-catch block:

try {
    Import-Module -Name 'Pode' -MaximumVersion 2.99.99 -ErrorAction Stop
} catch {
    # exception management code
}

Within your server.ps1 file, first you need to start the Server. This is where the main script will go that defines how the server should function:

Start-PodeServer {
    # logic
}

Now we have our server, we need to get it to listen on an endpoint. This will allow us to receive requests and respond to them. The below tells your server to listen on localhost and port 8080 for HTTP requests:

Start-PodeServer {
    Add-PodeEndpoint -Address localhost -Port 8080 -Protocol Http
}

Our simple server will have a single GET route; it will be invoked when the root (/) of the server is called (ie: http://localhost:8080/). This route will respond with a simple JSON response:

Start-PodeServer {
    Add-PodeEndpoint -Address localhost -Port 8080 -Protocol Http

    Add-PodeRoute -Method Get -Path '/' -ScriptBlock {
        Write-PodeJsonResponse -Value @{ 'value' = 'Hello, world!' }
    }
}

Save the file, and run pode start (or just ./server.ps1) from the terminal. This will start the server listening on localhost:8080. When http://localhost:8080/ is hit, the server will respond with:

{
    "value": "Hello, world!"
}

Note

If you have issues with pode start, just invoke ./server.ps1 directly.

Building your first Pode app

Setup

REST Server

More Tutorials