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Reference Documentation

In this category you will find reference documentation for various components of the Internet Computer. This is the place to come if you wanted to know the signature for a particular method, or which functions are offered in an SDK, or, if you are so inclined, simply to browse and get a better picture of the components that make up the Internet Computer.

SDK References​

The DFINITY command-line execution environment (dfx) is the primary tool for creating, deploying, and managing the dapps for the Internet Computer platform. Explore dfx and its subcommands in the dfx Commands and Envars section and check our beloved dfx.json schema.

Language References​

Motoko and Rust are two of the better supported languages for building on the IC. You can quickly access all their functionality by exploring the Motoko references and Rust references. A major ingredient in allowing data exchange across the IC is a language independent description of the canister interfaces called Candid. You can see the functional description by exploring the Candid references

Functionality References​

Now that more dapps are being built on the IC, it becomes apparent that several functionalities will be required by many or most apps. As such, several functionalities have been designed and developed. To learn more about financial integration explore the Ledger Canister. To reference authentication and identity services see the Internet Identity specification.

Internet Computer References​

For those who want to understand the intricacies of the Internet Computer’s behavior in detail, we refer you to the Internet Computer Interface Specification.

Security Best Practices​

We also include here various suggestions for Security Best Practices. There is information useful for developing with a security mindset when building on the IC, but also more generally.

External Resources​

For other references, feel free to check out the Internet Computer for Geeks paper which gives an overview of the entire system, the How it Works videos to take a deeper dive into various topics, and also Roman's Blog and Kyle's blog.