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Environment Setup

Some of the tutorials on this website are provided for various combinations of programming languages and IDEs. Based on your preference, setup one of the following development environments on your machine:

Command-line interface​

Command-line interface, a CLI, is an essential tool when developing modern web applications. It is often used to initialize new projects, handle their dependencies, or to manage their source code. Different operating systems have their own options (for example, in Windows there's the Command Prompt and PowerShell, and Unix-based systems have all sorts of shells) but in our case we're going to be using bash which is available cross-platform.

  • On Unix-based systems, bash (or one of its flavors like zsh) is most likely available already, and if not, you can get it from https://www.gnu.org/software/bash.
  • On Windows, you can install Git for Windows which comes bundled with a bash terminal

Source code management​

Another essential part of the modern software development, especially for web, is the source code management tool git. Go to the Downloads section, and install the latest release for your platform. As mentioned in the previous section, the Windows installer comes with the bash CLI as well.

To check whether git is installed and available, try running the following command in bash:

git --version

You should see something like this:

Checking git in terminal

Runtime​

We will also need the Node.js runtime to run our code, and the Node.js package manager, NPM, to manage 3rd party dependencies. You can get an installer for your platform on https://nodejs.org/en/download which will install both.

To make sure the tools are available, try running the following two commands in bash:

node -v
npm -v

You should see something like this:

Checking node in terminal

Editor​

For the coding itself you're welcome to use whichever editor you like the most. If you're looking for recommendations, we recommend Visual Studio Code as it is free, cross-platform, fast, and packed with lots of great features. Simply install the latest stable build for your platform.

tip

We've built an extension for Visual Studio Code that provides insight into some of the APS services and data directly from the editor: Autodesk Forge Tools. This could be useful when debugging your own APS applications.

Then you need to install C# Extension (if don't have it yet) for Visual Studio Code. To install, click on extensions tab on the left sidebar of your Visual Studio Code, then search for C# and click install as shown in the image below.

info

This extension is used for developing web applications in C# in the Visual Studio Code editor: C# Extension. This could be useful when setting up and debugging your own APS applications.

And you're all set. Now head over to one of the tutorials and let's code!