Quickstart

This guide will get you up and running in Golem in minutes.

Install Golem CLI

Golem CLI is a command-line application that allows you to deploy components, create and invoke workers, and otherwise manage your Golem applications.

There are precompiled binaries of golem (and its other variants) for various platforms. Alternatively, you can build Golem CLI for yourself.

Precompiled binaries

You can download the full version of golem from the following page:

There are precompiled binaries of two variants of the CLI here:

• golem is the full version of the command line interface, including a locally runnable version of Golem itself.
• golem-cli is a lightweight version of the command line interface, requiring a running Golem cluster

In this documentation we will use the golem command in the snippets. The available commands of (except the one for starting up the local Golem cluster) are the same in both variants.

Running Golem

It is possible to test Golem locally without installing anything else than the above described golem executable. To use it, start the local Golem cluster by running the following command:

golem server run

To use the open source version of Golem in production you will need to deploy it in your own infrastructure. See the deployment page for available deployment options.

It is also possible to use our hosted version of Golem, available at [https://console.golem.cloud (opens in a new tab)].

Creating a Profile

To specify the Golem service location, run the following command:

golem init

This command starts an interactive configuration process. For non-interactive options - see Golem CLI page.

On the first step you'll see 3 options:

• Golem Default. Use this options if you have started Golem locally using golem server run.
• Golem. Use this option in case of a customised Golem installation in your own infrastructure.
• Golem Cloud. Use this option for a hosted version of Golem.

Building an Example

Golem runs components that are WebAssembly programs. Components are like applications, except they may expose functions that can be called externally.

To deploy to Golem, you must first build a component using any programming language and toolchain that can build WebAssembly components.

The golem command line interface provides integrates a set of commands to create, build, and deploy components.

To get started, you create an application and a single component using your chosen programming language with the golem app new and golem component new commands.

golem app new example rust
cd example
golem component new rust example:component

This will generate a new component in the current, ready to be compiled and deployed to Golem.

To build the newly created component, use the following command:

golem app build

This compiles the newly created application, which consists of a single Golem component at the moment. An application can have multiple components and they can depend on each other. New components can be added to the application by using the golem component new command.

Uploading Your Component

To upload your component to Golem, you can use the component deploy command.

golem component deploy

When you add a component you will see some basic information about the component such as its name, unique identifier, version, and size. In addition, you will see a list of exports. These are the public API of your worker and can be used to call it with the CLI or REST API, as we will see below.

Uploading a component to Golem does not actually execute the component. Instead, it only makes it available for execution to Golem.

Every separate execution of your component is referred to as a worker based on that component.

Create Workers

In Golem, every worker has a unique id, which is arbitrary text that you define. If you don't need a meaningful id for workers, you can generate a UUID.

Once you have chosen a worker id, you can launch the worker either explicitly, or by invoking any function on the worker (for example, a “main” function).

Here, we creating a new worker test-1 :

golem worker new test-1

We don't have to specify which component to use, because golem detects that the current directory belongs to a Golem application consisting of a single component.

Invoking Workers

Thanks to the WebAssembly component model, your Golem applications are not just an executable. Rather, they may export functions that can be called from the outside. Exported functions allow your workers to be given instructions or queried for their state.

The default template used by the above commands for each language creates a component that exports a simple counter interface. To use it, we can invoke the add and get functions, using their fully quialified names:

golem worker invoke test-1 'example:component/api.{add}' 2
golem worker invoke test-1 'example:component/api.{add}' 3
golem worker invoke test-1 'example:component/api.{get}'

If a worker of the specified name has not been created, then when you attempt to invoke a function on the worker, it will first be created.

Check the Invoke section to learn about more about where the fully qualified function names are coming from and what other ways you have to interact with workers.

Next Steps

In this guide, you have learned how to build and deploy invincible serverless workers on Golem, and seen how you can interact with them as they execute.

Take your next steps with Golem by exploring the following resources:

• Read about the fundamentals of Golem
• Learn about the main concepts
• Read one of the language-specific guides to learn how to develop Golem components
• Check out how to deploy Golem to your infrastructure
• Read the details of how to invoke workers
• Learn more about the Golem CLI
• Explore operational aspects such as how worker state is persisted, what metrics and logs are available
• Check the References section for detailed information on APIs and syntaxes