Introducing the AdonisJS Ace CLI — Let’s Learn Adonis 5, Lesson 1.2

View all lessons in the Let’s Learn Adonis 5 series here.

Newly created Adonis projects actually come with the Ace CLI packed in. The Ace CLI is Adonis’ command-line interface (CLI). It allows us to conveniently create various types of files, startup our starter, get overview information about our project. It’s also easily expandable by both installed packages and us the developers.

The first command you’re probably going to utilize is called node ace serve, this is the command we use to start our server up. The serve command is what allows us to view our application in the browser at http://localhost:3333.

Ace Command Anatomy

Let’s digest that serve command a little bit to get a better understanding of what we’re doing. In the command node ace serve, the actual command name is serve while node ace is instructing node that we'd like to communicate with the Ace CLI, made available via the ace file within our project. So, node ace gives us access to the Ace CLI, while serve is the actual command we're running.

Node Ace

If we initiate the Ace CLI using node ace, but don't give it a command the Ace CLI will print back to us a listing of all the currently available commands within our project.

Now, as we add additional packages to our application those packages can register additional commands for us to use to the Ace CLI. We too can also add additional commands as well by utilizing the node ace make:command command.

Initial Command Options

So, let’s briefly run through the initial commands Adonis comes with out of the box and what those commands are for.

Available Commands

• build
  This will build out your applications, converting it from TypeScript to JavaScript. If we have frontend assets, it'll also build those assets using Webpack Encore.
• configure
  We'll use this to configure additional packages that we install within our application. Packages can include instructions on how that package needs to be added…