Bergquist Applications is about expanding the Algorand Defi Economy.
In this repository is a "get started" package, designed to make it easy for beginner developers to jump into building web applications on the Algorand blockchain. Using modern web develpment frameworks, we can bypass a lot of the initial struggles web developers go through when trying to build web applications, and at the same time provide an an intuitive environment for developing and deploying smart contracts. In teaching others about blockchain development, and learning from students and crypto minds alike, Bergquist Applications hopes to produce better and better blockchain applications in time to come.
Any prior knowledge of crypto and software development will help in understanding how the flow of the application works, and how the data is being stored and retrieved on the blockchain. Questions or issues about this development pipeline should be brought up in the Discord Server, where users can get responses from me and other users. Hope all goes well and don't hesitate to reach out!
There are a few things you'll need to have downloaded on your computer:
Visual Studio Code (Integrated Coding Workspace) https://code.visualstudio.com/
Node.js (Web Application Packages) https://nodejs.org/en/
Python (For compiling smart contracts) https://www.python.org/downloads/
By the end of this tutorial, you should have a web application application running in a local server.
Download all the files contained in this repo into a folder of your choice. Open that folder in an instance of Visual Studio Code. Click on the Terminal Button at the top of the window and select "New Terminal". In the terminal type "npm install" and click enter.
Let this run, the system is installing the modules in package.json, the services the web app depends on. Don't worry about any warnings that pop up, they shouldn't be an issue. Once that has finished running you should have a node_modules folder and a package-lock.json file in your build.
Now in the terminal run "npm run dev". This should run a local server with the build on it. The web app should be able to be accessed by opening up a web browser and typing "localhost:3000".
If my website popped up then you're all ready to go. The build files are contained in the src folder, and the flow of the web application starts there. Understanding how to build your own applications will come from studying the flow of this application and applying it to your own use cases.
Press CTRL + C if you want to stop the local server so you can type in the terminal again.
By the end of this turtorial, you will have deployed an Algorand smart contract to the mainnet Algorand chain.
Change directory into your contracts folder by typing "cd contracts".
Type "python -m venv venv" into the terminal, this should make a venv folder in your contracts folder.
Run "pip install pyteal" to install the pyteal libraries.
Run "python contracts.py" to execute the contract.py file, this file contains the logic for the smart contract, defining what to do when a wallet performs specific calls to the smart contract. This is the file that you will be creating your own smart contracts in. Running the contracts.py file will compile the pyteal code into teal code.
Now in the deployment.js file copy and paste the mnemonic phrase for the wallet you want to assign as the creator wallet for this contract, in both the "creatorMnemonic" and the "userMnemonic" variables. For example:
Now in the terminal run "node deployment.js". This should run the deployment.js file, which contains a bunch of helpful deployment and testing functions using the algosdk. Running this file runs the main program, which currently calls the createApp function to deploy the contract to the mainnet chain. If all this successfully goes through, you should see an app-id, which represents the app you just deployed to the Algorand chain.
Congratulations, you've just deployed a smart contract! The code in the contracts folder will help you understand how to build and test your own smart contracts for your own use cases.
For more on smart contracts in Pyteal: https://pyteal.readthedocs.io/en/stable/overview.html
Bergquist Applications uses Firebase to host the application dynamically. Google provides a managed server for you to host your application on, and syncs well with Google analytics to give insights on how your app is doing. By the end of this tutorial you should have an application that can be accessed on the world wide web.
Create a Firebase account, this can be by using your existing google account. Then create a new project, naming it what you want and picking all the default settings for project creation.
Once inside you project dashboard, click on the cog button next to project overview, click project settings. Now you should be under the general tab for project settings, scroll to the bottom to see the config for the project. Populate the "env" file in your root directory to be these values found in the config. Rename your "env" file to ".env".
Go to your ".firebaserc" file, and change the default to be the project id of your newly created Firebase project. Make sure your project is is Blaze plan on Firebase, so that you have the rights to deploy.
Now run "npm run build" in your terminal, this should compile the existing build into a production build for deployment. Run "npm run deploy" to deploy the production build to Firebase. this will deploy the "server.js" file to Firebase Functions, which will handle all the requests made to the application. If this all goes through successfully, you should now have a project pushed to deployment.