Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Redwood requires Node.js (>=14.19.x <=16.x) and Yarn (>=1.15)
• Are you on Windows? For best results, follow our Windows development setup guide

Create a Redwood project with yarn create redwood-app:

yarn create redwood-app my-redwood-project

Prefer TypeScript?

Redwood comes with full TypeScript support from the get-go:

yarn create redwood-app my-redwood-project --typescript

Then change into that directory and start the development server:

cd my-redwood-project
yarn redwood dev

Your browser should automatically open to http://localhost:8910 where you'll see the Welcome Page, which links out to a ton of great resources:

The Redwood CLI

Congratulations on running your first Redwood CLI command! From dev to deploy, the CLI is with you the whole way. And there's quite a few commands at your disposal:

yarn redwood --help

For all the details, see the CLI reference.

Prisma and the database

Redwood wouldn't be a full-stack framework without a database. It all starts with the schema. Open the schema.prisma file in api/db and replace the UserExample model with the following Post model:

api/db/schema.prisma

model Post {
  id        Int      @id @default(autoincrement())
  title     String
  body      String
  createdAt DateTime @default(now())
}

Redwood uses Prisma, a next-gen Node.js and TypeScript ORM, to talk to the database. Prisma's schema offers a declarative way of defining your app's data models. And Prisma Migrate uses that schema to make database migrations hassle-free:

yarn rw prisma migrate dev

# ...

? Enter a name for the new migration: › create posts

rw is short for redwood

You'll be prompted for the name of your migration. create posts will do.

Now let's generate everything we need to perform all the CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete) actions on our Post model:

yarn redwood g scaffold post

Navigate to http://localhost:8910/posts/new, fill in the title and body, and click "Save":

Did we just create a post in the database? Yup! With yarn rw g scaffold <model>, Redwood created all the pages, components, and services necessary to perform all CRUD actions on our posts table.

Frontend first with Storybook

Don't know what your data models look like? That's more than ok—Redwood integrates Storybook so that you can work on design without worrying about data. Mockup, build, and verify your React components, even in complete isolation from the backend:

yarn rw storybook

Before you start, see if the CLI's setup ui command has your favorite styling library:

yarn rw setup ui --help

Testing with Jest

It'd be hard to scale from side project to startup without a few tests. Redwood fully integrates Jest with the front and the backends and makes it easy to keep your whole app covered by generating test files with all your components and services:

yarn rw test

To make the integration even more seamless, Redwood augments Jest with database scenarios and GraphQL mocking.

Ship it

Redwood is designed for both serverless deploy targets like Netlify and Vercel and serverful deploy targets like Render and AWS:

yarn rw setup deploy --help

Don't go live without auth! Lock down your front and backends with Redwood's built-in, database-backed authentication system (dbAuth), or integrate with nearly a dozen third party auth providers:

yarn rw setup auth --help

Next Steps

The best way to learn Redwood is by going through the comprehensive tutorial and joining the community (via the Discourse forum or the Discord server).