Intro for new developers

This is a quick introduction to get new developers up to speed on Graphene.

Starting Graphene

For Ubuntu 14.04 LTS users, see this link first: https://github.com/cryptonomex/graphene/wiki/build-ubuntu

and then proceed with:

git clone https://github.com/cryptonomex/graphene.git
cd graphene
git submodule update --init --recursive
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug .
make
./programs/witness_node/witness_node

This will launch the witness node. If you would like to launch the command-line wallet, you must first specify a port for communication with the witness node. To do this, add text to witness_node_data_dir/config.ini as follows, then restart the node:

rpc-endpoint = 127.0.0.1:8090

Then, in a separate terminal window, start the command-line wallet cli_wallet:

./programs/cli_wallet/cli_wallet

To set your iniital password to 'password' use:

>>> set_password password
>>> unlock password

To import your initial balance:

>>> import_balance nathan [5KQwrPbwdL6PhXujxW37FSSQZ1JiwsST4cqQzDeyXtP79zkvFD3] true

If you send private keys over this connection, rpc-endpoint should be bound to localhost for security.

A list of CLI wallet commands is available here.

Code coverage testing

Check how much code is covered by unit tests, using gcov/lcov (see http://ltp.sourceforge.net/coverage/lcov.php ).

cmake -D ENABLE_COVERAGE_TESTING=true -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug .
make
lcov --capture --initial --directory . --output-file base.info --no-external
libraries/fc/bloom_test
libraries/fc/task_cancel_test
libraries/fc/api
libraries/fc/blind
libraries/fc/ecc_test test
libraries/fc/real128_test
libraries/fc/lzma_test README.md
libraries/fc/ntp_test
tests/intense_test
tests/app_test
tests/chain_bench
tests/chain_test
tests/performance_test
lcov --capture --directory . --output-file test.info --no-external
lcov --add-tracefile base.info --add-tracefile test.info --output-file total.info
lcov -o interesting.info -r total.info libraries/fc/vendor/\* libraries/fc/tests/\* tests/\*
mkdir -p lcov
genhtml interesting.info --output-directory lcov --prefix `pwd`

Now open lcov/index.html in a browser.

Unit testing

We use the Boost unit test framework for unit testing. Most unit tests reside in the chain_test build target.

Witness node

The role of the witness node is to broadcast transactions, download blocks, and optionally sign them.

./witness_node --rpc-endpoint "127.0.0.1:8090" --enable-stale-production -w \""1.6.0"\" \""1.6.1"\" \""1.6.2"\" \""1.6.3"\" \""1.6.4"\"

Running specific tests

• tests/chain_tests -t block_tests/name_of_test

Using the API

We provide several different API's. Each API has its own ID. When running witness_node, initially two API's are available: API 0 provides read-only access to the database, while API 1 is used to login and gain access to additional, restricted API's.

TODO: the following examples use the old authority definition and thus do not work. They need to be updated.

Here is an example using wscat package from npm for websockets:

$ npm install -g wscat
$ wscat -c ws://127.0.0.1:8090
> {"id":1, "method":"call", "params":[0,"get_accounts",[["1.2.0"]]]}
< {"id":1,"result":[{"id":"1.2.0","annotations":[],"registrar":"1.2.0","referrer":"1.2.0","referrer_percent":0,"name":"genesis","owner":{"weight_threshold":1,"key_auths":[["PUBLIC_KEY",1]]},"active":{"weight_threshold":1,"key_auths":[["PUBLIC_KEY",1]]},"memo_key":"PUBLIC_KEY","voting_account":"1.2.0","num_witness":0,"num_committee":0,"votes":[],"statistics":"2.7.0","whitelisting_accounts":[],"blacklisting_accounts":[]}]}
$

We can do the same thing using an HTTP client such as curl for API's which do not require login or other session state:

$ curl --data '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "call", "params": [0, "get_accounts", [["1.2.0"]]], "id": 1}' http://127.0.0.1:8090/rpc
{"id":1,"result":[{"id":"1.2.0","annotations":[],"registrar":"1.2.0","referrer":"1.2.0","referrer_percent":0,"name":"genesis","owner":{"weight_threshold":1,"key_auths":[["PUBLIC_KEY",1]]},"active":{"weight_threshold":1,"key_auths":[["PUBLIC_KEY",1]]},"memo_key":"PUBLIC_KEY","voting_account":"1.2.0","num_witness":0,"num_committee":0,"votes":[],"statistics":"2.7.0","whitelisting_accounts":[],"blacklisting_accounts":[]}]}

API 0 is accessible using regular JSON-RPC:

$ curl --data '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "get_accounts", "params": [["1.2.0"]], "id": 1}' http://127.0.0.1:8090/rpc

You can use the login API to obtain network, database and history API's. Here is an example of how to call add_node from the network API:

{"id":1, "method":"call", "params":[1,"login",["bytemaster", "supersecret"]]}
{"id":2, "method":"call", "params":[1,"network",[]]}
{"id":3, "method":"call", "params":[2,"add_node",["127.0.0.1:9090"]]}

Note, the call to network is necessary to obtain the correct API identifier for the network API. It is not guaranteed that the network API identifier will always be 2.

Since the network API requires login, it is only accessible over the websocket RPC. Our doxygen documentation contains the most up-to-date information about API's for the witness node and the wallet. If you want information which is not available from an API, it might be available from the database; it is fairly simple to write API methods to expose database methods.

Running private testnet

Normally witness_node assumes it won't be producing blocks from genesis, or against very old chain state. We need to get witness_node to discard this assumption if we actually want to start a new chain, so we will need to specify in config.ini:

enable-stale-production = true

We also need to specify which witnesses will produce blocks locally; witness_node does not assume that it should produce blocks for a given witness just because it has the correct private key to do so. There are ten witnesses at genesis of the testnet, block production can be enabled for all of them by specifying multiple times in config.ini:

witness-id = "1.6.0"
witness-id = "1.6.1"
witness-id = "1.6.2"
witness-id = "1.6.3"
witness-id = "1.6.4"
witness-id = "1.6.5"
witness-id = "1.6.6"
witness-id = "1.6.7"
witness-id = "1.6.8"
witness-id = "1.6.9"

Questions

• Is there a way to generate help with parameter names and method descriptions?

  Yes. Documentation of the code base, including APIs, can be generated using Doxygen. Simply run doxygen in this directory. We are thinking of integrating Doxygen's XML output format to provide a better help command to the CLI wallet.

• Is there a way to allow external program to drive cli_wallet via websocket, JSONRPC, or HTTP?

  Yes. External programs may connect to the CLI wallet and make its calls over a websockets API. To do this, run the wallet in server mode, i.e. cli_wallet -s "127.0.0.1:9999" and then have the external program connect to it over the specified port (in this example, port 9999).

• Is there a way to access methods which require login over HTTP?

  No. Login is inherently a stateful process (logging in changes what the server will do for certain requests, that's kind of the point of having it). If you need to track state across HTTP RPC calls, you must maintain a session across multiple connections. This is a famous source of security vulnerabilities for HTTP applications. Additionally, HTTP is not really designed for "server push" notifications, and we would have to figure out a way to queue notifications for a polling client.

  Websockets solves all these problems. If you need to access Graphene's stateful methods, you need to use Websockets.

• What is the meaning of a.b.c numbers?

  The first number specifies the space. Space 1 is for protocol objects, 2 is for implementation objects. Protocol space objects can appear on the wire, for example in the binary form of transactions. Implementation space objects cannot appear on the wire and solely exist for implementation purposes, such as optimization or internal bookkeeping.

  The second number specifies the type. The type of the object determines what fields it has. For a complete list of type ID's, see enum object_type and enum impl_object_type in types.hpp.

  The third number specifies the instance. The instance of the object is different for each individual object.

• The answer to the previous question was really confusing. Can you make it clearer?

  All account ID's are of the form 1.2.x. If you were the 9735th account to be registered, your account's ID will be 1.2.9735. Account 0 is special (it's the "genesis account," which is controlled by the delegates and has a few abilities and restrictions other accounts do not).

  All asset ID's are of the form 1.3.x. If you were the 29th asset to be registered, your asset's ID will be 1.3.29. Asset 0 is special (it's BTS, which is considered the "core asset").

  The first and second number together identify the kind of thing you're talking about (1.2 for accounts, 1.3 for assets). The third number identifies the particular thing.