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7: Create a local developer environment

Beginner
Tutorial

All of the projects deployed through ICP Ninja in the previous tutorial modules are deployed temporarily for only 20 minutes. If you'd like to deploy a project for long-term production use, you'll need to:

  1. Download the IC SDK and any necessary dependencies.

  2. Create a developer identity.

  3. Obtain cycles.

  4. Deploy your application to the mainnet.

Let's take a look at how to complete these steps.

1. Install the IC SDK​

Prerequisites​

Open a terminal window.
Download and install Node.js.
sh -ci "$(curl -fsSL https://internetcomputer.org/install.sh)"

To customize your IC SDK installation, you can use the interactive installation prompt or set environment variables for a terminal session.

Confirm the IC SDK has been installed (you may need to open a new terminal window):

dfx --version

2. Create a developer identity​

When a canister is created and deployed, the developer identity that created the canister is set as a controller of that canister. A controller has permission to manage the canister.

By default, dfx will create and use the default identity. This identity is not stored securely. It is recommended you create your own personal identity.

First, use dfx to list all current identities. If none exist, it will automatically create the default identity.

dfx identity list

Create a new developer identity with the command:

dfx identity new IDENTITY_NAME
Output
Your seed phrase for identity 'IDENTITY_NAME': hotel knock any token tooth deal fossil salmon coral idea tip weapon cotton save fiction major arrive history library clerk depth poet path guide
Write it down in a safe place, as this information can be used to reconstruct your key in case of emergency.
Created identity: "IDENTITY_NAME".

Identities created with dfx are global; they are not confined to a specific project's context.

Identity names must use the characters ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.-_@0123456789.

Storing the developer identity's private key​

The private key for an identity is stored in the ~/.config/dfx/identity/IDENTITY_NAME/identity.pem. This file should be backed up to a secure location.

By default, dfx will store your identity in the local keyring/keychain. If a keyring/keychain is unavailable, it will prompt you to choose a password, then store your private key locally in a password-protected PEM file at ~/.config/dfx/identity/IDENTITY_NAME/identity.pem.encrypted.

Make sure you switch to the newly created identity as explained below.

Using your developer identity​

Only one identity is active and used by dfx at any given point in time. Get the name of the currently active identity by running:

dfx identity whoami

Switch to your new developer identity by running:

dfx identity use IDENTITY_NAME

To get the principal of the currently active identity, run:

dfx identity get-principal

Your developer identity will have a principal identifier in the format itk7v-ihlxk-ktdrh-fcnst-vkoou-orj77-52ogl-jqwj5-zpfdv-az3lr-xqe.

3. Obtaining cycles​

Cycles are used to measure and pay for the resources, such as memory, storage, and compute power, that are used by a canister. When a canister is deployed on the mainnet, cycles are 'charged' for every action that a canister performs.

To obtain cycles, developers may receive a cycles coupon, or the Internet Computer Protocol's utility token, ICP, can be converted into cycles and transferred into a canister. Cycles have a fixed price in XDR in order to make canister costs predictable and independent of the price of ICP. One trillion cycles always corresponds to one XDR.

Option A: Redeeming a cycles faucet coupon​

At hackathon events, DFINITY may offer cycles faucet coupons to participants, which can be redeemed for 10T free cycles.

If such a cycles faucet coupon was handed out to you, navigate to the website https://faucet.dfinity.org and follow the instructions there.

Option B: Converting ICP tokens to cycles​

The typical way to obtain cycles is to convert ICP tokens. First, you need to obtain ICP tokens through a crypto exchange, or they can be received through other activities such as participating in the NNS governance and receiving grants from the DFINITY foundation.

To get your account ID so you know where to send your ICP tokens, run the command:

dfx ledger account-id

Once you have sent some ICP to this account ID, you can verify that they were received by checking the balance with the command:

dfx ledger --network ic balance

After you have your ICP tokens ready, you can convert them into cycles using the command:

dfx cycles convert --amount AMOUNT --network ic

Deploying your dapp to the mainnet​

Now that you've obtained some cycles, you can deploy a project to the mainnet from the command line. Create a new project with:

dfx new hello_world --type=motoko && cd hello_world

Then, make sure you have an active connection to the mainnet. In your terminal window, run the command:

dfx ping ic

A successful connection to the mainnet will return an output such as:

{
  "certified_height": 57374997  "ic_api_version": "0.18.0"  "impl_hash": "d5896681ceac74c83c9473654de75214d5079193294ade3775e89a81270fd0cf"  "impl_version": "f8f59f896499f2fef394d8321116f83351c59aa8"  "replica_health_status": "healthy"  "root_key": [48, 129, 130, 48, 29, 6, 13, 43, 6, 1, 4, 1, 130, 220, 124, 5, 3, 1, 2, 1, 6, 12, 43, 6, 1, 4, 1, 130, 220, 124, 5, 3, 2, 1, 3, 97, 0, 129, 76, 14, 110, 199, 31, 171, 88, 59, 8, 189, 129, 55, 60, 37, 92, 60, 55, 27, 46, 132, 134, 60, 152, 164, 241, 224, 139, 116, 35, 93, 20, 251, 93, 156, 12, 213, 70, 217, 104, 95, 145, 58, 12, 11, 44, 197, 52, 21, 131, 191, 75, 67, 146, 228, 103, 219, 150, 214, 91, 155, 180, 203, 113, 113, 18, 248, 71, 46, 13, 90, 77, 20, 80, 95, 253, 116, 132, 176, 18, 145, 9, 28, 95, 135, 185, 136, 131, 70, 63, 152, 9, 26, 11, 170, 174]
}

Now, you can deploy your dapp to the mainnet by running the following command:

dfx deploy --network ic

In this command, the --network flag specifies which network the dapp should be deployed on. Other options for this flag are --network local and --network playground. Using the flag --network ic is required to deploy your dapp on the mainnet. If this flag is not included, your dapp will only be deployed locally by default.

Now, let's use your dapp! To access the dapp's frontend, first you need to get the canister's URL. To get this, run the command:

dfx canister id hello_world_frontend --network ic

This command will return the canister's URL, which should look like this:

https://5h5yf-eiaaa-aaaaa-qaada-cai.icp0.io