Loading and starting Genie apps

Genie apps are Julia projects that are composed of multiple modules distributed over multiple files. Loading a Genie app will bring into scope all the app's files, including the main app module, controllers, models, etcetera.

Starting a Genie REPL session MacOS / Linux

The quickest way to load an existing app in an interactive REPL is by executing bin/repl in the os shell, while in the app's root folder.

$ bin/repl

The Genie app will be loaded.

In order to start the web server, you can next execute:

julia> up()

If you want to directly start the server without having access to the interactive REPL, use bin/server instead of bin/repl:

$ bin/server

This will automatically start the web server in non interactive mode.

Starting a Genie REPL on Windows

On Windows the workflow is similar to macOS and Linux, but dedicated Windows scripts, repl.bat, server.bat are provided inside the project folder, within the bin/ directory. Double click them or execute them in the os shell (cmd, Windows Terminal, PowerShell, etc) to start an interactive REPL session or a server session, respectively, as explained in the previous paragraphs (the *nix and the Windows scripts run int the same way).

HEADS UP

It is possible that the scripts in the bin/ folder are missing - this is usually the case if the app was generated on an operating system (ex *nix) and ported to a different one (ex Windows). You can create them at anytime by running the generator in the Genie/Julia REPL (at the root of the Genie project).

To generate the Windows scripts:

julia> using Genie

julia> Genie.Generator.setup_windows_bin_files()

And for the *nix scripts:

julia> Genie.Generator.setup_nix_bin_files()

Alternatively, we can pass the path where we want the files to be created as the argument to setup_*_bin_files:

julia> Genie.Generator.setup_windows_bin_files("path/to/your/Genie/project")

REPL / Jupyter / Pluto / VSCode / other Julia environment

You might need to make the local package environment available, if it's not already activated:

using Pkg
Pkg.activate(".")

Then:

using Genie

Genie.loadapp()

This will assume that we're already in the app's root folder, and load the app (in other words that the bootstrap.jl file is in the current working directory). Otherwise you can also pass the path to the Genie app's folder as the argument for loadapp.

julia> Genie.loadapp("path/to/your/Genie/project")

Manual loading in Julia's REPL

In order to load a Genie app within an open Julia REPL session, first make sure that you're in the root dir of a Genie app. This is the project's folder and you can tell by the fact that there should be a bootstrap.jl file, plus Julia's Project.toml and Manifest.toml files, amongst others. You can julia> cd(...) or shell> cd ... your way into the folder of the Genie app.

Next, from within the active Julia REPL session, we have to activate the local package environment:

julia> ] # enter pkg> mode

pkg> activate .

Then, back to the julian prompt, run the following to load the Genie app:

julia> using Genie

julia> Genie.loadapp()

The app's environment will now be loaded.

In order to start the web server execute

julia> up()