Initialize Slate

Introduction

Slate is a front-end development service offered by Catalyst that enables you to deploy, preview, and launch your web applications seamlessly. You can deploy applications built with any front-end frameworks, with native support for popular JavaScript frameworks such as Next.js, React, Angular, Astro, Vue, SolidJS, Svelte, and Vite. You can view the entire list of supported frameworks in this help page.

You can initialize a Slate service in your project directory using the steps discussed in the upcoming section. If you want to deploy any existing project directory to Catalyst slate, you must first link the directory with the Slate service, using the catalyst slate:link command.You can also unlink it if required by using the catalyst slate:unlink command.

Additionally, you can add multiple Slate apps to a project directory where a Slate service is already initialized using the catalyst slate:create command. To deploy a Slate app, please refer to the steps mentioned in this help page.

Initialize Slate

You can initialize a Slate service directly in your app’s directory, or from a new directory. If you had selected Slate during the project initialization, you can follow the below listed steps:

You can also use the below command to initialize the Slate service directly:

1. Select the client framework of the application you wish to deploy in Slate. Press Enter to confirm.

2. Now, the CLI sets the default configuration for your Slate application based on the chosen framework. Provide a name for your application and press Enter.

This configuration includes the install and build commands and build path of the respective framework. If you wish to proceed with the default configuration, enter N. Else, enter Y to make the necessary updates.

By default, the install command is auto-detected as npm install and the build command as npm run build. If you would like to change these, you can do so by entering N and providing the required package command.

Once you confirm on the configuration, the Slate template code of the chosen framework will be downloaded to the project directory, and an entry will be added to the catalyst.json file, which serves as a connection between your project directory and the Catalyst Slate service.