How to get started with Agora

Published in

Agora.io

3 min readFeb 11, 2019

Agora.io is a Real-Time Engagement platform that provides cross-platform SDK’s for implementing voice, video and broadcasting capabilities into your next project.

Agora banner, featuring icons for voice, video, microphone, broadcasting, and messaging. Below the icons are the words “build the future now”. To the right of the text and icons are 3 people. One person with a beard and sunglasses is looking at their phone. the next person is looking at their phone and the third person is looking in awe through a VR headset.

Step 1: Agora.io Account

If you are not currently registered, head over to the Agora Dev Portal and sign up https://sso.agora.io/en/signup/ . If you are already have an account you can login using https://dashboard.agora.io

Step 2: App ID

Once you finish the sign-up process, you will be redirected to the Agora Console.

Open the Project Management tab within the Agora Console. Here you will see a list of all your projects, you can quickly access the AppID of an existing project or create a new project.

To create a new project and generate a new AppID, click the “Create” button in the upper left section of the screen.

Agora Console — Project Management page. List of all the projects the user has created within their Agora account.

Within the dialog box, you will be prompted to enter the Project Name and select your Authentication Mechanism.

Create project dialog. Input field for the project name with two authentication options below: Secure Mode uses AppID + Token, and Testing Mode: uses only AppID

The “Authentication Mechanism” options are very important, because your choice here will either (1) add the recommended layer of security needed when running your app in any environment beyond its initial “Proof of Concept” stage or (2) won’t add any security.

The second option is there to make it easier when testing Agora or building an initial “Proof of Concept” app. Once you have progressed from the testing phase of your project, Agora strongly recommends enabling Token Authentication.

For more information about Tokens, see Agora’s “Set up Authentication” Guide.

Step 3: Download the Agora SDK

Agora is available through dependency management tools (Cocoa Pods, JitPack, Swift Package, NPM, Pub.dev, Unity Asset Store) or you can manually download any of the Agora SDKs for whichever product and platform you are using from the Agora Downloads Page: https://docs.agora.io/en/Agora%20Platform/downloads

Build your app!

Follow the Agora documentation for each platform to get up and running.

Developer Resources

Check Out Agora’s Developer Resources page for examples on building basic video apps to advanced applications using Agora’s real-time engagement SDKS.

Other Resources

For more information about how to get started building Agora.io applications for specific platforms please checkout the platform specific Quick Start guides.

Quick Start Guides

Token Server Guids

I invite you to join the Agora Developer Slack community.