Quick Start

This guide takes you from an empty folder to a running Zinc API in a few minutes.

Before you start

Zinc requires Go 1.25 or newer.

If Go is not installed, download it from go.dev/dl and follow the installer for your operating system. Then open a new terminal and confirm the installed version:

go version

The output should report Go 1.25 or newer. Upgrade Go before continuing if it reports an older version.

Create a project

Create a folder for the application and initialize a Go module inside it:

mkdir hello-zinc
cd hello-zinc
go mod init example.com/hello-zinc

The module path identifies your project. Replace example.com/hello-zinc with your repository path when you have one.

Add Zinc

Install Zinc through the normal Go module tooling:

go get github.com/0mjs/zinc

This adds Zinc to go.mod and records the selected version in go.sum. The first-party middleware package is included in the same module.

Create main.go

Create a file named main.go with the following application:

package main

import (
  "log"

  "github.com/0mjs/zinc"
  "github.com/0mjs/zinc/middleware"
)

func main() {
  app := zinc.New()

  app.Use(
    middleware.RequestLogger(),
    middleware.Recover(),
  )

  app.Get("/", func(c *zinc.Context) error {
    return c.JSON(zinc.Map{
      "message": "Hello from Zinc!",
    })
  })

  log.Fatal(app.Listen(":8080"))
}

Run the application

Start the server from the project folder:

go run .

Zinc is now listening at http://localhost:8080.

Make a request

Open another terminal and call the route:

curl -i http://localhost:8080/

The response includes HTTP/1.1 200 OK and a JSON body:

{"message":"Hello from Zinc!"}

You are still using standard Go

The application also satisfies http.Handler, and this static route dispatches with zero request-time heap allocations.

Press Ctrl+C in the server terminal when you are finished.

What you just built

• zinc.New() created an application that also satisfies http.Handler.
• app.Use(...) installed request logging and panic recovery.
• app.Get(...) registered a standard GET / route.
• Returning an error keeps response and middleware failures in one error flow.
• c.JSON(...) encoded the response and set its content type.
• app.Listen(":8080") started the standard-library HTTP server.

Next steps

• Routing — parameters, wildcards, route groups, and matching rules.
• Middleware — the complete first-party middleware catalogue.
• HTTP interoperability — use Zinc with standard net/http handlers and servers.