Getting Started

An overview of Aidbox, how to start development, run your first app and deploy it into the cloud.

Creating an Account

To start working with Aidbox you have to create a free Aidbox account. After you receive a confirmation email from us, click the link it contains to confirm that you own the email address.

Setup Development Environment

For taking full advantage of Aidbox you will need GIT and NODE.JS.

• You can download and install GIT from git-scm.com/downloads.
• All the instructions how to install NODE.JS you can find at nodejs.org/download

You will also need aidbox-cli. You can install it with NPM. Just make sure that you have permissions for installing modules globally.

$ npm install -g aidbox-cli
$ aidbox v

If “aidbox v” returns OK, everything is ready for development of apps with Aidbox.

Clone a Sample Application

To try Aidbox run our sample single-page application (SPA).

Execute the following commands to clone it, and install modules and packages it depends on:

$ git clone https://github.com/Aidbox/sample-spa
$ cd sample-spa
$ npm install

Sample App Structure

It is a very simple app which consists of a minimal set of files.

|-README.md
|- package.json
|- dist
    |- app.js
    |- index.html
    |- style.css

Prepare a Box

You can work with Aidbox in two ways - using the dashboard or the command line interface (CLI) aidbox-cli. Command line interface is preferable because it provides more extensive functionality.

For preparing the box for work, you need to complete the following steps:

• Log into Aidbox
• Create a new box or switch to an existing one
• Create users for your box

Aidbox CLI

Login

For logging into Aidbox, execute the following command while in the root folder of your app:

$ aidbox login

Enter email and password of your Aidbox account.

Boxes

If you have created some boxes earlier, you can display all of your boxes by entering the command aidbox box list. You have to choose a box to work with.

$ aidbox box list
$ aidbox box use <boxname>

Otherwise enter the command aidbox box new <boxname> to create your first box.

$ aidbox box new <boxname>
$ aidbox box list

Users

Now You can create users for all the people who will be using your box.

$ aidbox user new <username>:<password>
$ aidbox user list

Another way of doing this is to run a wizard by entering the command aidbox user new.

Run Sample App

Link your app to the box. In the file dist\app.js set the variable BOX_URL to the URL of your box. For instance, if the name of your box is mysuperapp then set the variable BOX_URL this way:

var BOX_URL = 'https://mysuperapp.aidbox.io';

Now you can start your app locally. To do this enter the following command:

$ npm run start

Your application will be running at http://localhost:5000. Click on login button and enter login and password of one of the box users. Just in case, these are the users you have just created with aidbox user command, not your Aidbox account user.

After logging in you will see a simple patient list which allows to filter, add and edit patients.

Deploy App into the Box

Now you can deploy your app into the box. To achieve this, enter the following command:

$ aidbox deploy

After receiving a message about successful deploy, you can visit your app at the URL generated from the box name - https://mysuperapp.aidbox.io for the box mysuperapp.