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one - start here

This guide assumes you have installed and setup snow already.

A snow app is composed of the following pieces at minimum.
In this guide, we will call the example application my_app.

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• my_app
  • assets/
  • src/Main.hx
  • project.flow

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assets/ this is for any project assets. This folder is not required.
src/Main.hx this is entry point of the app, and extends the snow.App class.
project.flow this is a description for the build pipeline to generate our app.

Building the application

snow uses flow to build it’s applications.
From your project directory (cd my_app), you use the flow build command.
This will read the project.flow file, and generate your application into the bin/ folder.

If you wanted to build and run the application, use flow run.

flow has it’s own extensive documentation on it’s features, but for now we can continue!
From here on, the guide will use flow run to build and run the app when suggested.

The entry point

If you ran the application, you should have seen a blank window, with the title ‘snow app’.
We will get to configure this shortly, as this requires changing Main.hx, the entry point.

Here is a very simple snow app:

import snow.Log.log;
import snow.types.Types;

class Main extends snow.App {

    override function config( config:AppConfig ) {

        return config;

    } //config

    override function ready() {

        log('ready');

    } //ready

} //Main

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ready

This function is where you start coding your application.
In here, snow is ready and all features and systems are available from this point forward.

config

There is only one function that happens before ready - the config function.
The config function is used by snow to handle changes you might want to do to the default and runtime config of your application, before ready is called.

What this means is that the following order of events takes place :

• snow entry point
  • set up snow systems
  • load default configs
  • request config from app
  • apply (possibly modified) config
• ready
  • your application code

Change the config slightly

Let’s modify the window title, to better reflect the application we are building.
Notice how we modify the existing config, and then return it?
This let’s you intercept values and ensure they are what you intended later.
For now, just set the window title and flow run.

override function config( config:AppConfig ) {

    config.window.title = 'my_app - a guide example';

    return config;

} //config

Accessing the snow features and API

To access the features of the API from within your application, you use the app variable which is available because you extended snow.App itself. The app variable is actually pointing at the snow instance so that you can use its API in a very simple form.

For example, say you wanted show a message on the default window, you would ask app.window to show a message.

override function ready() {

    app.window.simple_message('app is ready!');

} //ready

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Important endpoints

From the API, some of the more important ones will be

methods and properties

• app.shutdown() quit the app
• app.time current timestamp

members

• app.assets load and manage assets
• app.config read only after config callback
• app.io platform independent and specific io helpers
• app.input input handler
• app.audio audio system
• app.windowing windowing system
• app.window the default window

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Moving forward

This may seem short and simple, but understanding how the application fits together will allow you to architect applications however best fits your needs.

In guide two the application lifecycle and other important functions like update are introduced.

Or, go back to the guide