Project Setup

Install Deno

Haven't installed Deno yet? Head to the website (opens new window), its just about running a single command!

Well, there isn't anything else you'll need except Deno. But it's good to have an IDE, or just Editor, and in this case, VS Code (opens new window) serves very well. Though JetBrains IDE support Deno with a Plugin too.

VS Code Setup

If you are using VS Code (recommended), go ahead and install "VSCode Deno" extension for complete Deno support. Open VS Code in your project directory, and add a new directory .vscode with a file settings.json in it. Write the following contents into the file,

{
    "deno.enable": true
}

And boom! Deno enabled in your directory! If you are having issues, try reloading VS Code.

If you come from a Node.js (opens new window) background, you're probably used to index.js or main.js file names, but here in Deno, the convention of mod.ts (ts here is for TypeScript, you may use .js) is used. And since there's no package.json in Deno, you might find it better to have a deps.ts file to export your third party modules! Here's an example how to export Harmony from there,

export * from 'https://deno.land/x/harmony/mod.ts'

and you can just import Harmony lib exports from local deps.ts! It's a good way to maintain the third party modules you're using.

Now you're good to go! Let's start writing a simple bot in the next section.

Note that the import above has no version and a warning will be thrown the first time you import it. You can add a version such as https://deno.land/x/[email protected]/mod.ts.