Rust Guide

1. Iroha 2 Client Setup

In this part we shall cover the process of using the Iroha 2 Rust libraries. Instead of providing the complete basics, we shall assume knowledge of the most widely used concepts, explain what's unusual about Iroha 2 specifically, and provide a step-by-step guide to creating your own Rust client for it.

We assume that you know how to create a new package and have basic understanding of the fundamental Rust code; async functions, enum types, traits and borrowing/ownership, as well as the libraries that we use: serde, tokio, tracing, etc.

TIP

If you don't feel comfortable with any of the above, we recommend consulting the Rust book and docs.rs.

Iroha 2 makes extensive use of workspaces. Currently, there are two workspaces, the one that contains the WASM support library and the one that contains the core support libraries, which go in a domain-first order. What that means is that instead of having a global constants crate, we have a crate for the blockchain data model (iroha_data_model), a crate with cryptographic primitives (iroha_crypto), and so on. These, individually, have a module for constants.

If you add iroha_client to the other two crates, you get the minimum number of dependencies to start your own client, similar to iroha_client_cli.

Once the initial v2.0.0 release is complete, we plan to create a package on crates.io with all the documentation. In the meantime, you could use the local copy that you've just created in the previous step as a local installation in your client's Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
iroha_client = { version = "=2.0.0-pre-rc.13", path = "~/Git/iroha/client" }
iroha_data_model = { version = "=2.0.0-pre-rc.13", path = "~/Git/iroha/data_model" }
iroha_crypto = { version = "=2.0.0-pre-rc.13", path = "~/Git/iroha/crypto" }
iroha_config = { version = "=2.0.0-pre-rc.13", path = "~/Git/iroha/config" }

The added benefit of using a local copy is that you have access to the minimal BFT network in the form of docker-compose.yml, which allows you to experiment. The drawbacks are mitigated by the fact that Rust links statically by default, so we recommend you experiment with the local set up first.

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You could also make use of our test_network crate, which is available via GitHub but not via crates.io.

You would also benefit from having immediate access to the example configurations in the ~/Git/iroha/configs folder.

So let's copy the example client configuration somewhere useful:

$ cp -vfr ~/Git/iroha/configs/client/config.json example/config.json

We recommend looking through it to familiarise yourself with the key pieces of information that every Iroha 2 client needs. Specifically, each client operates on behalf of a pre-existing account. These accounts are identified by a name@domain_name ID and can only be accessed provided that you know their specific key.

2. Configuring Iroha 2

Your application written in Rust needs to instantiate a client. The client typically needs specific configuration options, which you could either generate or load from the provided config.json. Let's do that now:

use iroha_config::client::Configuration;
use iroha_data_model::TryToValue;

let config_loc = "../configs/client/config.json";
let file = File::open(config_loc)
    .wrap_err("Unable to load the configuration file at `.....`")
    .expect("Config file is loading normally.");
let config: Configuration = serde_json::from_reader(file)
    .wrap_err("Failed to parse `../configs/client/config.json`")
    .expect("Verified in tests");

Using said configuration, instantiate a client:

// Create an Iroha client
let iroha_client: Client = Client::new(&config)?;

Note that it used to be necessary to create a mutable client. Sending and receiving messages affects the client's internal state, but now that state is hidden behind interior mutable smart pointers.

Of course, depending on your application, you might want to de-serialise your ClientConfiguration structure from a different location. Perhaps, you might want to build the configuration in place using the command-line arguments, or perhaps, you're using the XDG specification to store the file persistently in a different location. For this purpose, it's useful to try and construct an instance of ClientConfiguration:

use iroha_core::prelude::*;
use iroha_data_model::prelude::*;

let kp = KeyPair::new(
    PublicKey::from_str(
        r#"ed01207233bfc89dcbd68c19fde6ce6158225298ec1131b6a130d1aeb454c1ab5183c0"#,
    )?,
    PrivateKey::from_hex(
        Algorithm::Ed25519,
        "9ac47abf59b356e0bd7dcbbbb4dec080e302156a48ca907e47cb6aea1d32719e7233bfc89dcbd68c19fde6ce6158225298ec1131b6a130d1aeb454c1ab5183c0"
            .into(),
    )?
)?;

let (public_key, private_key) = kp.clone().into();
let account_id: AccountId = "alice@wonderland".parse()?;

let config = ClientConfiguration {
    public_key,
    private_key,
    account_id,
    torii_api_url: SmallStr::from_string(iroha_config::torii::uri::DEFAULT_API_URL.to_owned()),
    ..ClientConfiguration::default()
};

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Note that the keys in client configuration are given in multi-hash format. If you are experiencing issues parsing the keys in this format, check the troubleshooting section.

3. Registering a Domain

Registering a domain is a relatively easy operation. Most of the boilerplate code has to do with setting up the Iroha 2 client and deserialising its configuration.

use iroha_client::client::Client;
use iroha_data_model::{
    metadata::UnlimitedMetadata,
    prelude::{Domain, DomainId, InstructionBox, RegisterBox},
};

To register a domain, you need the domain name:

// Create a domain Id
let looking_glass: DomainId = "looking_glass".parse()?;

Which we convert into an instruction:

// Create an ISI
let create_looking_glass = RegisterBox::new(Domain::new(looking_glass));

Note that we use RegisterBox and IdentifiableBox. Despite what your instincts as a Rust developer might suggest, we're not actually using any kind of dynamic dispatch. There's no dyn anywhere, and RegisterBox isn't an alias for Box<dyn Register>.

A RegisterBox is a specialised enum that uses static dispatch to achieve what looks like dynamic dispatch, without any heap allocation. If you want to add more types to RegisterBox you must either open an issue on GitHub, or do that by yourself on a local fork of Iroha.

The instruction is then batched into a transaction:

// Prepare a transaction
let metadata = UnlimitedMetadata::default();
let instructions: Vec<InstructionBox> = vec![create_looking_glass.into()];
let tx = iroha_client
    .build_transaction(instructions, metadata)
    .wrap_err("Error building a domain registration transaction")?;

Which is then submitted into the pipeline:

// Submit a prepared domain registration transaction
iroha_client
    .submit_transaction(&tx)
    .wrap_err("Failed to submit transaction")?;

Note the question mark here. This will return an Err variant if there's something immediately and obviously wrong with the transaction: for example, if it couldn't submit the transaction to the peer (e.g. there's no connection), or if the transaction got rejected with an error. The cost is that the submit_transaction function is synchronous.

We could have also done the following:

iroha_client
    .submit_with_metadata(create_looking_glass, UnlimitedMetadata::default())?;

or

iroha_client.submit(create_looking_glass)?;

The latter style is just syntactic sugar. Every submission comes in the form of a transaction that has metadata.

While the latter is a convenient shorthand that we shall use frequently, we strongly advise using explicit construction in production code.

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It is likely that we shall replace most if not all instances of submit in our code base with explicit transactions.

4. Registering an Account

Registering an account is a bit more involved than registering a domain. With a domain, the only concern is the domain name. However, with an account, there are a few more things to worry about.

First of all, we need to create an AccountId. Note that we can only register an account to an existing domain. The best UX design practices dictate that you should check if the requested domain exists now, and if it doesn't, suggest a fix to the user. After that, we can create a new account named white_rabbit.

use iroha_data_model::prelude::AccountId;

// Create an `iroha_data_model::AccountId` instance
// with a DomainId instance and a Domain ID for an account
let longhand_account_id = AccountId::new("white_rabbit".parse()?, "looking_glass".parse()?);
let account_id: AccountId = "white_rabbit@looking_glass"
    .parse()
    .expect("Valid, because the string contains no whitespace, has a single '@' character and is not empty after");

// Check that two ways to define an account match
assert_eq!(account_id, longhand_account_id);

Second, you should provide the account with a public key. It is tempting to generate both it and the private key at this time, but it isn't the brightest idea. Remember, that the white_rabbit trusts you, alice@wonderland, to create an account for them in the domain _looking_glass, but doesn't want you to have access to that account after creation.

If you gave white_rabbit a key that you generated yourself, how would they know if you don't have a copy of their private key? Instead, the best way is to ask white_rabbit to generate a new key-pair, and give you the public half of it:

let key: PublicKey = get_key_from_white_rabbit();

Only then do we build an instruction from it:

let create_account =
    RegisterBox::new(IdentifiableBox::from(NewAccount::with_signatory(id, key)));

Which is then wrapped in a transaction and submitted to the peer as in the previous section.

5. Registering and minting assets

Iroha has been built with few underlying assumptions about what the assets need to be in terms of their value type and characteristics (fungible or non-fungible, mintable or non-mintable).

To register an asset, we first construct an iroha_data_model::asset::DefinitionId like so:

// Create an asset
let asset_def_id = AssetDefinitionId::from_str("time#looking_glass")
    .expect("Valid, because the string contains no whitespace, has a single '#' character and is not empty after");

INFO

Note that we use # symbol to separate the name of the asset from the domain to which it belongs. This is intentional. This reflects the rule that there can be many alices in many domains, with only one alice per domain, and there can be an asset that is also named alice, but there can be only one, regardless of type.

Then construct an instruction:

// Initialise the registration time
let register_time =
    RegisterBox::new(AssetDefinition::fixed(asset_def_id.clone()).mintable_once());

// Submit a registration time
iroha_client.submit(register_time)?;

This creates an asset time that can only be minted once and has the type fixed. AssetDefinition::fixed just like its other cousins (quantity and big_quantity) returns a builder of an AssetDefinition.

This asset is mintable_once, which means that the next time we mint it, we have to specify the entire amount that is going to exist for the rest of the existence of the blockchain.

// Create a MintBox using a previous asset and account
let mint = MintBox::new(
    12.34_f64.try_to_value()?,
    IdBox::AssetId(AssetId::new(asset_def_id, account_id)),
);

// Submit a minting transaction
iroha_client.submit_all([mint])?;

Now imagine that the white_rabbit@looking_glass was not very keen and didn't notice that he wanted 123.4_f64 as the amount of time. Now white rabbit notices the problem and thinks "oh dear, not a lot of time has passed, perhaps I can give myself some more", and submits another mint request with 111.06_f64 instead of the original 12.34_f64. But, alas, no such luck. The white rabbit cannot mint more time and is thus perpetually late.

Roses, by contrast, are already registered in the network during the genesis round, and belong to alice@wonderland. Moreover, when they were registered, we didn't add the restriction, so we can mint them again and again as alice:

let mint_roses = MintBox::new(
    42_u32.to_value(),
    IdBox::AssetId(AssetId::new(roses, alice)),
);

Then submit the instruction as usual:

iroha_client
    .submit(mint_roses)
    .wrap_err("Failed to submit transaction")?;

INFO

Our assets are strongly typed. As such, when you create a MintBox, you need to check that the asset has the correct underlying type. If you don't know the type, query it. This is also why we specifically annotate numerical literals with their type.

Contrary to what you might think, this restriction isn't just for pedantry. Implicit conversion errors are the bane of all programmers, if you got the AssetValueType incorrect, how do you know that it was the only mistake in that transaction?

6. Burning assets

Burning assets is quite similar to minting. First, you create the burn instruction indicating which asset to burn and its quantity.

// Burn the Asset instance
let burn_roses = BurnBox::new(
    10_u32.to_value(),
    IdBox::AssetId(AssetId::new(roses, alice)),
);

Then submit this instruction:

iroha_client.submit(burn_roses)?;

7. Visualising outputs

Finally, we should talk about visualising data. The Rust API is currently the most complete in terms of available queries and instructions. After all, this is the language in which Iroha 2 was built.

We shall, however, leave most of the aforementioned advanced features down the rabbit hole, up to the reader's own devices to discover. This document can easily get out of sync with the state of the API features. By contrast, the online documentation is always up to date. Plus a short tutorial wouldn't be able to do all these features justice. Instead, we shall retain parity with other language tutorials and introduce you to pipeline filters.

There are two possible event filters: PipelineEventFilter and DataEventFilter, we shall focus on the former. This filter sieves events pertaining to the process of submitting a transaction, executing a transaction, and committing it to a block.

First, let's build a filter:

use iroha_data_model::prelude::*;

let filter = FilterBox::Pipeline(PipelineEventFilter::identity());

Then, we start listening for events in an infinite loop:

for event in iroha_client.listen_for_events(filter)? {
    match event {
        Ok(event) => println!("Success: {:#?}", event),
        Err(err) => println!("Sadness:( {:#?}",  err),
    }
};

Needless to say, an synchronous infinite blocking loop is bad UX for anything but a command-line program, but for illustration purposes, this would create a nice printout, just like in iroha_client_cli.