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Basecoin Plugins

In the previous guide, we saw how to use the basecoin tool to start a blockchain and the basecli tools to send transactions. We also learned about Account and SendTx, the basic data types giving us a multi-asset cryptocurrency. Here, we will demonstrate how to extend the tools to use another transaction type, the AppTx, so we can send data to a custom plugin. In this example we explore a simple plugin named counter.

Example Plugin

The design of the basecoin tool makes it easy to extend for custom functionality. The Counter plugin is bundled with basecoin, so if you have already installed basecoin and run make install then you should be able to run a full node with counter and the a light-client countercli from terminal. The Counter plugin is just like the basecoin tool. They both use the same library of commands, including one for signing and broadcasting SendTx.

Counter transactions take two custom inputs, a boolean argument named valid, and a coin amount named countfee. The transaction is only accepted if both valid is set to true and the transaction input coins is greater than countfee that the user provides.

A new blockchain can be initialized and started just like in the previous guide:

# WARNING: this wipes out data - but counter is only for demos...
rm -rf ~/.counter
countercli reset_all

countercli keys new cool
countercli keys new friend

counter init $(countercli keys get cool | awk '{print $2}')

counter start

The default files are stored in ~/.counter. In another window we can initialize the light-client and send a transaction:

countercli init --node=tcp://localhost:46657 --genesis=$HOME/.counter/genesis.json

YOU=$(countercli keys get friend | awk '{print $2}')
countercli tx send --name=cool --amount=1000mycoin --to=$YOU --sequence=1

But the Counter has an additional command, countercli tx counter, which crafts an AppTx specifically for this plugin:

countercli tx counter --name cool --amount=1mycoin --sequence=2
countercli tx counter --name cool --amount=1mycoin --sequence=3 --valid

The first transaction is rejected by the plugin because it was not marked as valid, while the second transaction passes. We can build plugins that take many arguments of different types, and easily extend the tool to accomodate them. Of course, we can also expose queries on our plugin:

countercli query counter

Tada! We can now see that our custom counter plugin tx went through. You should see a Counter value of 1 representing the number of valid transactions. If we send another transaction, and then query again, we will see the value increment:

countercli tx counter --name cool --amount=2mycoin --sequence=4 --valid --countfee=2mycoin
countercli query counter

The Counter value should be 2, because we sent a second valid transaction. And this time, since we sent a countfee (which must be less than or equal to the total amount sent with the tx), it stores the TotalFees on the counter as well.

Keep it mind that, just like with basecli, the countercli verifies a proof that the query response is correct and up-to-date.

Now, before we implement our own plugin and tooling, it helps to understand the AppTx and the design of the plugin system.

AppTx

The AppTx is similar to the SendTx, but instead of sending coins from inputs to outputs, it sends coins from one input to a plugin, and can also send some data.

type AppTx struct {
  Gas   int64   `json:"gas"`
  Fee   Coin    `json:"fee"`
  Input TxInput `json:"input"`
  Name  string  `json:"type"`  // Name of the plugin
  Data  []byte  `json:"data"`  // Data for the plugin to process
}

The AppTx enables Basecoin to be extended with arbitrary additional functionality through the use of plugins. The Name field in the AppTx refers to the particular plugin which should process the transaction, and the Data field of the AppTx is the data to be forwarded to the plugin for processing.

Note the AppTx also has a Gas and Fee, with the same meaning as for the SendTx. It also includes a single TxInput, which specifies the sender of the transaction, and some coins that can be forwarded to the plugin as well.

Plugins

A plugin is simply a Go package that implements the Plugin interface:

type Plugin interface {

  // Name of this plugin, should be short.
  Name() string

  // Run a transaction from ABCI DeliverTx
  RunTx(store KVStore, ctx CallContext, txBytes []byte) (res abci.Result)

  // Other ABCI message handlers
  SetOption(store KVStore, key string, value string) (log string)
  InitChain(store KVStore, vals []*abci.Validator)
  BeginBlock(store KVStore, hash []byte, header *abci.Header)
  EndBlock(store KVStore, height uint64) (res abci.ResponseEndBlock)
}

type CallContext struct {
  CallerAddress []byte   // Caller's Address (hash of PubKey)
  CallerAccount *Account // Caller's Account, w/ fee & TxInputs deducted
  Coins         Coins    // The coins that the caller wishes to spend, excluding fees
}

The workhorse of the plugin is RunTx, which is called when an AppTx is processed. The Data from the AppTx is passed in as the txBytes, while the Input from the AppTx is used to populate the CallContext.

Note that RunTx also takes a KVStore - this is an abstraction for the underlying Merkle tree which stores the account data. By passing this to the plugin, we enable plugins to update accounts in the Basecoin state directly, and also to store arbitrary other information in the state. In this way, the functionality and state of a Basecoin-derived cryptocurrency can be greatly extended. One could imagine going so far as to implement the Ethereum Virtual Machine as a plugin!

For details on how to initialize the state using SetOption, see the guide to using the basecoin tool.

Implement your own

To implement your own plugin and tooling, make a copy of docs/guide/counter, and modify the code accordingly. Here, we will briefly describe the design and the changes to be made, but see the code for more details.

First is the cmd/counter/main.go, which drives the program. It can be left alone, but you should change any occurrences of counter to whatever your plugin tool is going to be called. You must also register your plugin(s) with the basecoin app with RegisterStartPlugin.

The light-client is located in cmd/countercli/main.go and allows for transaction and query commands. This file can also be left mostly alone besides replacing the application name and adding references to new plugin commands.

Next is the custom commands in cmd/countercli/commands/. These files are where we extend the tool with any new commands and flags we need to send transactions or queries to our plugin. You define custom tx and query subcommands, which are registered in main.go (avoiding init() auto-registration, for less magic and more control in the main executable).

Finally is plugins/counter/counter.go, where we provide an implementation of the Plugin interface. The most important part of the implementation is the RunTx method, which determines the meaning of the data sent along in the AppTx. In our example, we define a new transaction type, the CounterTx, which we expect to be encoded in the AppTx.Data, and thus to be decoded in the RunTx method, and used to update the plugin state.

For more examples and inspiration, see our repository of example plugins.

Conclusion

In this guide, we demonstrated how to create a new plugin and how to extend the basecoin tool to start a blockchain with the plugin enabled and send transactions to it. In the next guide, we introduce a plugin for Inter Blockchain Communication, which allows us to publish proofs of the state of one blockchain to another, and thus to transfer tokens and data between them.