Getting Started¶

This guide gets you up and running locally with Pyplet.

Prerequisites¶

Python 3.12 or newer
A virtual environment tool (e.g., uv, venv, or virtualenv)

Browser support

For the best experience, use a Chromium‑based browser (Chrome, Edge, Brave). Other browsers are compatible, but some graphical elements or behaviors may differ, or in some cases look or perform poorly.

Install Pyplet¶

uv venv --python 3.12
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install pyplet

All server parameters can also be supplied via PYPLET_* environment variables (see the CLI page for details).

Pyodide runtime assets¶

By default, Pyplet loads Pyodide from a public CDN. You do not need to download the Pyodide bundle manually for local development.

Advanced setups can override the Pyodide URL (for example to point to a self-hosted bundle) via the --pyodide-url option documented in the CLI page or the PYPLET_PYODIDE environment variable.

Run the server¶

Start the Tornado server:

pyplet start

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8080 to see the home page with available apps.

Server settings live in pyplet.server.config and can be overridden either via CLI flags or environment variables. Refer to the CLI documentation for the full list of options.

Create a new app¶

To scaffold a new micro app under apps/, run:

pyplet init <project_name>

This creates a generic template under apps/<project_name>/ that you can adapt to your use case.

Explore examples¶

Open any app by navigating to /apps/<project>/<name> where <project> is the folder under apps/ (e.g., examples) and <name> matches the _client/_server filename prefix.

The official examples repository lives at https://github.com/cetic/pyplet_examples. In this project, examples are available under apps/pyplet_examples/examples/; if that folder is missing, clone the pyplet_examples repository into it. Refer to Examples for cloning instructions and a full tour of the available micro-apps.