Getting Started

Once SixtyFPS is built, you can use it in your CMake application or library target in two steps:

1. Associate the .60 files that you’d like to use by calling the sixtyfps_target_60_sources cmake command. The first parameter is your application (or library) CMake target, and the parameters following are the names of the .60 files. This will result in the .60 files to be compiled into C++ source code.

2. The generated C++ source code also needs the SixtyFPS run-time library. This dependency is satisfied by linking SixtyFPS::SixtyFPS into your target with the target_link_libraries command.

A typical example looks like this:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)
project(my_application LANGUAGES CXX)

# Note: Use find_package(SixtyFPS) instead of the following three commands,
# if you prefer the package approach.
include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare(
    SixtyFPS
    GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/sixtyfpsui/sixtyfps.git
    GIT_TAG v0.1.2
    SOURCE_SUBDIR api/sixtyfps-cpp
)
FetchContent_MakeAvailable(SixtyFPS)

add_executable(my_application main.cpp)
sixtyfps_target_60_sources(my_application my_application_ui.60)
target_link_libraries(my_application PRIVATE SixtyFPS::SixtyFPS)

Suppose my_application_ui.60 was a “Hello World” like this:

HelloWorld := Window {
    width: 400px;
    height: 400px;

    // Declare an alias that exposes the label's text property to C++
    property my_label <=> label.text;

    label := Text {
       y: parent.width / 2;
       x: parent.x + 200px;
       text: "Hello, world";
       color: blue;
    }
}

then you can use the following code in you main function to show the Window and change the text:

#include "my_application_ui.h"

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    auto hello_world = HelloWorld::create();
    hello_world->set_my_label("Hello from C++");
    // Show the window and spin the event loop until the window is closed.
    hello_world->run();
    return 0;
}

This works because the SixtyFPS compiler translated my_application_ui.60 to C++ code, in the my_application_ui.h header file. That generated code has a C++ class that corresponds to the HelloWorld element and has API to create the ui, read or write properties or set callbacks. You can learn more about how this API looks like in general in the Generated code section.

Tutorial

For an in-depth walk-through, you may be interested in reading our walk-through SixtyFPS Memory Game Tutorial Tutorial. It will guide you through the .60 mark-up language and the C++ API by building a little memory game.