Loading and starting Genie apps

At any time, you can load and serve an existing Genie app. Loading a Genie app will bring into scope all your app's files, including the main app module, controllers, models, etcetera.

Starting a Genie REPL session MacOS / Linux

The recommended approach is to start an interactive REPL in Genie's environment by executing bin/repl in the os shell, while in the project's root folder.

$ bin/repl

The app's environment will be loaded.

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

julia> up()

If you want to directly start the server, use bin/server instead of bin/repl:

$ bin/server

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

Finally, there is the option to start the serve and drop to an interactive REPL, using bin/serverinteractive instead.

Starting a Genie REPL on Windows

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


HEADS UP

It is possible that the Windows executables repl.bat, server.bat, and serverinteractive.bat are missing - this is usually the case if the app was generated on a Linux/Mac and ported to a windows computer. You can create them at anytime by running this generator in the Genie/Julia REPL (at the root of the Genie project):

julia> using Genie

julia> Genie.Generator.setup_windows_bin_files()

Alternatively, you can pass the path to the project as the argument to setup_windows_bin_files:

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

Juno / Jupyter / other Julia environment

For Juno, Jupyter, and other interactive environments, first make sure that you cd into your app's project folder.

We will need to make the local package environment available:

using Pkg
Pkg.activate(".")

Then:

using Genie

Genie.loadapp()

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> startup()

HEADS UP

The recommended way to load an app is via the bin/repl, bin/server and bin/serverinteractive commands. It will correctly start the Julia process and start the app REPL with all the dependencies loaded with just one command.