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Getting Started

Using the JS SDK on Windows

You can develop smart contracts on Windows using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2).

In order to use WSL2, follow the next steps:

  • Run PowerShell as Administrator
  • Execute wsl --install to install Ubuntu and do additional setup automatically. Check more details here
  • Restart your machine
  • WSL2 will continue setup process on start. Setup your username and password when prompted.
  • Check this guide to setup npm, node, npx, VSCode and other tools of your choice in order to start developing.

In case of any issues of setting up WSL2 make sure that:

  • Your Windows OS is up to date
  • Virtualisation is turned on in BIOS
  • Windows Subsystem for Linux and Virtual Machine Platform are turned on in Windows Features (Start -> Search -> Turn Windows Feature On or Off)

Install Node​

To install Node, follow the instructions on the Node.js website.

Create a new project​

The best way to create a new NEAR app connected with a frontend is through create-near-app. When initializing the project, be sure to select creating a project in TypeScript with a frontend option of your choice.

npx create-near-app

If you only wish to develop and deploy a JS contract, the hello-near-js repository is great to use as a template or one of the examples in the SDK repository.

If you would like to generate a new project manually with npm init, make sure you include the following configuration in the generated package.json:

  "dependencies": {
    "near-sdk-js": "*"
  }