actix-website/content/docs/getting-started.md

title	menu	weight
Getting Started	docs_basics	130

Getting Started

Let’s write our first actix web application!

Hello, world!

Start by creating a new binary-based Cargo project and changing into the new directory:

cargo new hello-world
cd hello-world

Now, add actix-web as dependencies of your project by ensuring your Cargo.toml contains the following:

[dependencies]
actix-web = "{{< actix-version "actix-web" >}}"

In order to implement a web server, we first need to create a request handler.

A request handler is a function that accepts an HttpRequest instance as its only parameter and returns a type that can be converted into HttpResponse:

Filename: src/main.rs

{{< include-example example="getting-started" section="setup" >}}

Next, create an Application instance and register the request handler with the application's resource on a particular HTTP method and path and after that, the application instance can be used with HttpServer to listen for incoming connections. The server accepts a function that should return an HttpHandler instance. For simplicity server::new could be used, this function is shortcut for HttpServer::new:

{{< include-example example="getting-started" section="main" >}}

That's it! Now, compile and run the program with cargo run. Head over to http://localhost:8088/ to see the results.

If you want, you can have an automatic reloading server during development that recompiles on demand. To see how this can be accomplished have a look at the autoreload pattern.