Quickstart

Welcome to the Gin quickstart! This guide walks you through installing Gin, setting up a project, and running your first API—so you can start building web services with confidence.

Prerequisites

• Go: Version 1.23 or higher should be installed.
• Confirm Go is in your PATH and usable from your terminal. For Go installation help, see official docs.

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Step 1: Install Gin and Initialize Your Project

Start by creating a new project folder and initializing a Go module:

mkdir gin-quickstart && cd gin-quickstart
go mod init gin-quickstart

Add Gin as a dependency:

go get -u github.com/gin-gonic/gin

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Step 2: Create Your First Gin App

Create a file called main.go:

touch main.go

Open main.go and add the following code:

package main

import "github.com/gin-gonic/gin"

func main() {
  router := gin.Default()
  router.GET("/ping", func(c *gin.Context) {
    c.JSON(200, gin.H{
      "message": "pong",
    })
  })
  router.Run() // listens on 0.0.0.0:8080 by default
}

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Step 3: Run Your API Server

Start your server with:

go run main.go

Navigate to http://localhost:8080/ping in your browser, and you should see:

{"message":"pong"}

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Additional Example: Using net/http with Gin

If you want to use net/http constants for response codes, import it as well:

package main

import (
  "github.com/gin-gonic/gin"
  "net/http"
)

func main() {
  router := gin.Default()
  router.GET("/ping", func(c *gin.Context) {
    c.JSON(http.StatusOK, gin.H{
      "message": "pong",
    })
  })
  router.Run()
}

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Tips & Resources

• New to Go? Learn how to write and run Go code in the official Go documentation.

• Need a full-featured example? Try scaffolding with:

  curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gin-gonic/examples/master/basic/main.go > main.go

• For more detailed documentation, visit the Gin source code docs.