Getting started

Install, write one file, build, open the result.

Install

ARKlight needs Python 3.10 or newer.

pip install arklight
arklight --version

The first

arklight

command asks you to accept the license terms once. In scripts and CI there is nobody to ask, so set

ARKLIGHT_ACCEPT_LICENSE=1

in the environment. Read the

license summary

first.

Debian and Ubuntu

There is also an APT package that installs

arklight

and registers its package source, so later updates are a plain

sudo apt update

curl -fsSL https://arklight-ecosystem.github.io/ARKlight/pubkey.gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/arklight.gpg
sudo rm -f /etc/apt/sources.list.d/arklight.list
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/arklight.gpg] https://arklight-ecosystem.github.io/ARKlight/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/arklight.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install arklight-installer

Your first site

Create

site.py

. Three things are mandatory: the

# include <stdlib.ARKlight>

line first, a

Site()

, and one

@site.page(...)

function per route that returns a

Page(...)

# include <stdlib.ARKlight>

site = Site()

@site.page("/")
def home():
    return Page(
        Heading("ARKlight"),
        Text("Build websites with Python."),
        Button("Get Started"),
    )

Build it

arklight build site.py

That writes plain, dependency-free HTML into

ARK/

. Pass

-o

to choose another folder and

--no-open

to stop it opening your browser.

Add some state

State belongs to the page. Put

State(...)

inside

Page(...)

as a child, show it with

Bind(...)

, and change it with an

Action

return Page(
    Heading("Counter"),
    State("count", 0),
    Text(Bind("count")),
    Button("Increment", on_click=Action.increment("count", 1)),
)

Where next

The tutorial walks through pages, components, state and styling.
The reference lists every component, action and CLI command.
arklight search <Name> prints the compiler's own schema for any component or action.

Read the

gotchas

before your first multi-file site; four of them cost most newcomers a build cycle.