Getting started

This only work for Beego 1.x. If you are using Beego 2.x, please change language to EN-US.

Installation

Beego contains sample applications to help you learn and use the Beego app framework.

You will need a functioning Go 1.1 installation for this to work.

You will need to install or upgrade Beego and the Bee dev tool:

$ go get -u github.com/astaxie/beego
$ go get -u github.com/beego/bee

For convenience, you should add $GOPATH/bin to your $PATH environment variable. Please make sure you have already set the $GOPATH environment variable.

# if you havn't set $GOPATH
$ echo 'export GOPATH="$HOME/go"' >> ~/.profile # or ~/.zshrc, ~/.cshrc, whatever shell you use
# if you have already set $GOPATH
$ echo 'export PATH="$GOPATH/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.profile # or ~/.zshrc, ~/.cshrc, whatever shell you use
$ exec $SHELL

Want to quickly see how it works? Then just set things up like this:

$ cd $GOPATH/src
$ bee new hello
$ cd hello
$ bee run

Windows users：

> cd %GOPATH%/src
> bee new hello
> cd hello
> bee run hello

These commands help you:

1. Install Beego into your $GOPATH.
2. Install the Bee tool in your computer.
3. Create a new application called hello.
4. Start hot compile.

Once it’s running, open a browser to http://localhost:8080/.

Simple example

The following example prints Hello world to your browser, it shows how easy it is to build a web application with beego.

package main
import (
    "github.com/astaxie/beego"
)
type MainController struct {
    beego.Controller
}
func (this *MainController) Get() {
    this.Ctx.WriteString("hello world")
}
func main() {
    beego.Router("/", &MainController{})
    beego.Run()
}

Save file as hello.go, build and run it:

$ go build -o hello hello.go
$ ./hello

Open http://127.0.0.1:8080 in your browser and you will see hello world.

What is happening in the scenes of the above example?

1. We import package github.com/astaxie/beego. As we know, Go initializes packages and runs init() in every package (more details), so Beego initializes the BeeApp application at this time.
2. Define the controller. We define a struct called MainController with an anonymous field beego.Controller, so the MainController has all methods that beego.Controller has.
3. Define some RESTful methods. Due to the anonymous field above, MainController already has Get, Post, Delete, Put and other methods, these methods will be called when user sends a corresponding request (e.g. the Post method is called to handle requests using POST. Therefore, after we overloaded the Get method in MainController, all GET requests will use that method in MainController instead of in beego.Controller.
4. Define the main function. All applications in Go use main as their entry point like C does.
5. Register routers. This tells Beego which controller is responsible for specific requests. Here we register MainController for /, so all requests to / will be handed by MainController. Be aware that the first argument is the path and the second one is pointer to the controller you want to register.
6. Run the application on port 8080 as default, press Ctrl+c to exit.

Following are shortcut .bat files for Windows users:

Create files step1.install-bee.bat and step2.new-beego-app.bat under %GOPATH%/src.

step1.install-bee.bat:

set GOPATH=%~dp0..
go build github.com\beego\bee
copy bee.exe %GOPATH%\bin\bee.exe
del bee.exe
pause

step2.new-beego-app.bat:

@echo Set value of APP same as your app folder
set APP=coscms.com
set GOPATH=%~dp0..
set BEE=%GOPATH%\bin\bee
%BEE% new %APP%
cd %APP%
echo %BEE% run %APP%.exe > run.bat
echo pause >> run.bat
start run.bat
pause
start http://127.0.0.1:8080

Click those two file in order will quick start your Beego tour. And just run run.bat in the future.