In this chapter, we took a deeper look into working with the SharePoint Framework through a simple hello world project. As part of this work, we installed and configured Node.js and verified that we're using the correct version of the runtime. Next, we configured npm, the node package manager, and ensured it was up to date. This guarantees we can run the SharePoint Framework-based code in our own development environment locally. Finally, we installed Yeoman and Gulp, the two core tools for generating the SharePoint Framework projects and resources and serving the code for local testing.

We used Visual Studio Code to view and test the generated project, and served the code to a local SharePoint Workbench with Gulp.

Finally, we took an in-depth look into the source files and project structure of the generated project.

Next, in Chapter 4, Building your First Web Part, we go beyond hello world and develop a real SharePoint Framework web part.