This tutorial describes how peers are selected to evaluate transactions that will not then be written to the ledger, which may also be considered as queries.

Query handling strategies

The SDK provides several selectable strategies for how it should evaluate transactions on peers in the network. The available strategies are defined in DefaultQueryHandlerStrategies. The desired strategy is (optionally) specified as an argument to connect() on the Gateway, and is used for all transaction evaluations on Contracts obtained from that Gateway instance.

If no query handling strategy is specified, MSPID_SCOPE_SINGLE is used by default. This will evaluate all transactions on the first peer from which is can obtain a response, and only switch to another peer if this peer fails.

The default query timeout may be changed along with the query strategy. This value will be in seconds.

const { Gateway, DefaultQueryHandlerStrategies } = require('fabric-network');

const connectOptions = {
    queryHandlerOptions: {
        timeout: 60,
        strategy: DefaultQueryHandlerStrategies.MSPID_SCOPE_SINGLE
    }
}

const gateway = new Gateway();
await gateway.connect(connectionProfile, connectOptions);

Plug-in query handlers

If behavior is required that is not provided by the default query handling strategies, it is possible to implement your own query handling. This is achieved by specifying your own factory function as the query handling strategy. The factory function should return a query handler object and take one parameter:

1. Blockchain network: Network

The Network provides access to peers on which transactions should be evaluated.

function createQueryHandler(network) {
    /* Your implementation here */
    return new MyQueryHandler(peers);
}

const connectOptions = {
    queryHandlerOptions: {
        strategy: createQueryHandler
    }
 }

const gateway = new Gateway();
await gateway.connect(connectionProfile, connectOptions);

The query handler object returned must implement the following functions.

class MyQueryHandler {
	/**
	 * Evaluate the supplied query on appropriate peers.
	 * @param {Query} query A query object that provides an evaluate()
	 * function to invoke itself on specified peers.
	 * @returns {Buffer} Query result.
	 */
    async evaluate(query) { /* Your implementation here */ }
}

For a complete sample plug-in query handler implementation, see sample-query-handler.ts.