Publishing events from the REST server

Publishing events from the REST server

The REST server can be configured to subscribe to events emitted from a deployed business network, and publish those business events for consumption by client applications. Currently, the REST server supports publishing events to client applications over WebSockets.

Client applications can use a WebSocket client to subscribe to the business events that are published by the REST server. There are WebSocket clients available for all major programming languages and application types - for example, client side web user interfaces, backend server processes, mobile applications, and integration tools.

Enabling WebSockets

You can enable WebSockets using the -w argument on the command line:

composer-rest-server -c alice1@my-network -w

Alternatively, you can enable WebSockets by using the COMPOSER_WEBSOCKETS environment variable:

export COMPOSER_WEBSOCKETS=true
composer-rest-server -c alice1@my-network

When you have successfully enabled WebSockets, you will be able to connect a WebSocket client to the base URL displayed in the output of the REST server:

Web server listening at: http://localhost:3000
Browse your REST API at http://localhost:3000/explorer

In this example, the base URL to use is http://localhost:3000. You must convert this into a WebSocket URL by changing the protocol from http to ws. In this example, the WebSocket URL to use is ws://localhost:3000.

Testing that WebSockets has been enabled

You can test that WebSockets has been enabled by using a WebSocket client to subscribe to events. The open source command line application wscat can be used for this purpose.

To install wscat, you can use npm. You may need to run this command with sudo, or as root, if you do not have the correct permissions to globally install npm modules:

npm install -g wscat

You can then use wscat to connect to and subscribe to business events published by the REST server. Any business events received will be printed to the console:

$ wscat -c ws://localhost:3000
connected (press CTRL+C to quit)
< {"$class":"org.example.basic.SampleEvent","asset":"resource:org.example.basic.SampleAsset#assetId:1","oldValue":"","newValue":"hello world","eventId":"a80d220b-09db-4812-b04b-d5d03b663671#0","timestamp":"2017-08-23T12:47:17.685Z"}
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