Vulcanize DB

Vulcanize DB is a set of tools that make it easier for developers to write application-specific indexes and caches for dapps built on Ethereum.

Table of Contents

1. Background
2. Dependencies
3. Install
4. Usage
5. Tests
6. API
7. Contributing
8. License

Background

The same data structures and encodings that make Ethereum an effective and trust-less distributed virtual machine complicate data accessibility and usability for dApp developers. VulcanizeDB improves Ethereum data accessibility by providing a suite of tools to ease the extraction and transformation of data into a more useful state.

Dependencies

• Go 1.11+
• Postgres 10.6
• Ethereum Node
  • Go Ethereum (1.8.23+)
  • Parity 1.8.11+

Install

1. Building the project
2. Setting up the database
3. Configuring a synced Ethereum node

Building the project

Download the codebase to your local GOPATH via:

go get github.com/vulcanize/vulcanizedb

Move to the project directory and use golang/dep to install the dependencies:

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/vulcanize/vulcanizedb

dep ensure

Once the dependencies have been successfully installed, build the executable with:

make build

If you are running into issues at this stage, ensure that GOPATH is defined in your shell. If necessary, GOPATH can be set in ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile, depending upon your system. It can be additionally helpful to add $GOPATH/bin to your shell's $PATH.

Setting up the database

1. Install Postgres

2. Create a superuser for yourself and make sure psql --list works without prompting for a password.

3. createdb vulcanize_public

4. cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/vulcanize/vulcanizedb

5. Run the migrations: make migrate HOST_NAME=localhost NAME=vulcanize_public PORT=5432

   • There is an optional var USER=username if the database user is not the default user postgres
   • To rollback a single step: make rollback NAME=vulcanize_public
   • To rollback to a certain migration: make rollback_to MIGRATION=n NAME=vulcanize_public
   • To see status of migrations: make migration_status NAME=vulcanize_public
   • See below for configuring additional environments

In some cases (such as recent Ubuntu systems), it may be necessary to overcome failures of password authentication from localhost. To allow access on Ubuntu, set localhost connections via hostname, ipv4, and ipv6 from peer/md5 to trust in: /etc/postgresql//pg_hba.conf

(It should be noted that trusted auth should only be enabled on systems without sensitive data in them: development and local test databases)

Configuring a synced Ethereum node

• To use a local Ethereum node, copy environments/public.toml.example to environments/public.toml and update the ipcPath and levelDbPath.

  • ipcPath should match the local node's IPC filepath:

    • For Geth:

      • The IPC file is called geth.ipc.
      • The geth IPC file path is printed to the console when you start geth.
      • The default location is:
        • Mac: <full home path>/Library/Ethereum
        • Linux: <full home path>/ethereum/geth.ipc

    • For Parity:

      • The IPC file is called jsonrpc.ipc.
      • The default location is:
        • Mac: <full home path>/Library/Application\ Support/io.parity.ethereum/
        • Linux: <full home path>/local/share/io.parity.ethereum/

  • levelDbPath should match Geth's chaindata directory path.

    • The geth LevelDB chaindata path is printed to the console when you start geth.
    • The default location is:
      • Mac: <full home path>/Library/Ethereum/geth/chaindata
      • Linux: <full home path>/ethereum/geth/chaindata
    • levelDbPath is irrelevant (and coldImport is currently unavailable) if only running parity.

Usage

Usage is broken up into two processes:

Data syncing

To provide data for transformations, raw Ethereum data must first be synced into vDB. This is accomplished through the use of the lightSync, sync, or coldImport commands. These commands are described in detail here.

Data transformation

Contract watchers use the raw data that has been synced into Postgres to filter out and apply transformations to specific data of interest.

There is a built-in contractWatcher command which provides generic transformation of most contract data. This command is described in detail here.

In many cases a custom transformer or set of transformers will need to be written to provide complete or more comprehensive coverage or to optimize other aspects of the output for a specific end-use. In this case we have provided the compose, execute, and composeAndExecute commands for running custom transformers from external repositories. This is described in detail here.

Tests

• Replace the empty ipcPath in the environments/infura.toml with a path to a full node's eth_jsonrpc endpoint (e.g. local geth node ipc path or infura url)
  • Note: integration tests require configuration with an archival node
• createdb vulcanize_private will create the test db
• make migrate NAME=vulcanize_private will run the db migrations
• make test will run the unit tests and skip the integration tests
• make integrationtest will run just the integration tests

API

Postgraphile is used to expose GraphQL endpoints for our database schemas, this is described in detail here.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! For more on this, please see here.

Small note: If editing the Readme, please conform to the standard-readme specification.

License

AGPL-3.0 © Vulcanize Inc