I have just started working with Hyperledger Fabric. I was looking for a tool that would demonstrate graphically the entire network and its operations.
Is there any existing project that does that?
If not, I intend to create one. Would anyone like to collaborate?
As a starting point, I am looking at using http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/latest/build_network.html . I understand that it will be worth including the following:
Organizations
MSPs
CAs
Peers
Channels
(please add to this list)
Looking through the APIs, I am trying to figure out the starting point. I was hoping to find something like Client.getOrganisations() to get a list of all organisations on the network, but it doesnt seem to exist. Any ideas how to discover all Organisations using the Node SDK?
Entities in Hyperledger Fabric usually executed with Docker,Docker Swarm or Kubernetes environments, hence I'd suggest to take a look on Weave Scope project which could provide quite good visualization for your docker containers deployment.
Related
I've only really just started looking into Hyperledger Fabric and have been asked to create an e-commerce platform (e-bay style) that uses the platform.
However, I am stuck with defining the appropriate architecture for the Hyperledger network, or if it is even appropriate to for this scenario, mainly because I do not know the number of organisations that will be part of the network at the start. Also how would this work having a single client on the front-end that users (in this case they would be organisations) would use to login, register, etc and how would this reflect on the Hyperledger network?
Would each new user be a new node on the network?
I first thought I could create a base network with just a ETCDRAFT orderer, a Fabric CA node, CouchBase, Fabric CLI node and a main Channel, and then add new organisations as they came along, but I wouldn't have anywhere to store the chain code as far I understand it.
I also thought of having the same structure but with an additional Peer node that would essentially represent the e-commerce platform itself, and new organisations (users on the ecommerce platform) would be added as users on the network, but that kind of defeats the purpose of a network in my view.
I know this might be a noob question but I am struggling a bit to define my initial set-up so that I can start writing the chain code, API and client, so any clarity on how this should ideally look in terms of network structure would be much appreciated.
The problem statement is quite vague in itself.
I am trying to answer the question with my assumptions.
Let consider e-commerce website like Amazon.
How many participants in there of blockchain network?
The sellers and buyers consider them as identities of a single organization not "Node".
The peers would be the various department running in the amazon like dep1,dep2 etc.
I've been studying the Hyperledger Fabric framework reading the docs for quite a while now but I'm getting a little lost in the middle of all that info. My question is: Is there any guidelines/"Step by step" on how to design a blockchain network from scratch? If you are starting a new project, where do you start?
Because I think I would understand it way more quicker if I actually started coding a little instead of reading and reading and reading...
Thanks a lot!
Edit 1:
I've chosen #kekomal answer as the correct one but I'd like to thank #Isha Padalia for the awesome VS Code extension and tutorial.
If you are really interested in learning and diving into Hyperledger Fabric, avoid byfn script. It performs a lot of magic for building a very simple Hyperledger Fabric network. After that, you have a network that you don't know how has been created and you have absolutely no idea of how to start deploying your custom network. There are daily questions here from people who started that way and are absolutely lost.
I find interesting this tutorial: https://medium.com/beyondi/setup-the-hyperledger-fabric-network-from-scratch-b82913b47549. Take into account that it is a little bit outdated.
You can complement it with this newer tutorial: https://www.blockchainexpert.uk/blog/how-to-deploy-hyperledger-fabric-network-from-scratch. Don't only run the steps. Analyze the files in https://github.com/blockchain-expert/hyperledger-fabric-network-from-scratch. Try playing with configtx.yaml, crypto-config.yaml and docker-compose files to customize your network and understand what you are doing.
Customize your organizations, your consortiums, your ordering service, your peers... Create your channels, join them, update your anchor peers... And understand what you are doing.
After that, if your network had one orderer, deploy a new one with more than one (with Raft consensus). If your network was using cryptogen, deploy a new one using Fabric-CAs instead. Or you can follow by playing with chaincodes.
NOTE: Apart from Hyperledger Fabric itself, it is essential to have basic notions of docker and PKI.
You are a beginner in Hypelredger fabric development then you have first cleared the concept of the orderer, peer, CA, and organization concept. And then first you have to start IBM Blockchain Platform VS Code extension for fabric. It will provide a local fabric environment to create, test and deploy a fabric smart contract. Also generate 1 peer, 1 orderer, 1 CA service under VS code environment.
Here is a link to start development with VS code extension.
Hope it will help you:)
hi #d3v9 start from here https://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.4/build_network.html. also you can find some great article on medium
I'm studying Hyperledger Fabric with the documentation(https://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.0/write_first_app.html)
I'm done with two samples, which is "Building Your First network" & "Writing Your First Application"
I'm also done adding 1 extra peer to each organization, by modifying certain files, as well as done trying all commands on "Writing Your Fist Application" session.
Now, I'd like to execute the same commands(e.g. Querying all cars, Adding new cars or whatever) on the first network where I have built up, not on the test Fabcar network.
The thing is that I really have no idea what to do and how to do, even though I know how to handle NodeJS program(by Writing Application webpage)
So I'd like to ask you some questions.
Should I modify some files in order to "move" all necessary things to my network? if so, which file should I modify?
By any chance, Could you please tell me the correct steps to make it? I feel like I need to install and instantiate the required smart contract on my peers. Am I right?
I really appreciate your help in advance.
To answer your question, you would need to read some documentation online that will help you understand the architecture and how you can build up the packages as hyperledger fabric provided freedom to users to create use case specific configurations.
To start with.
Make sure you have have understood the concept of peer, orderer, couchdb, ca authority. Those 4 things you need to play with most of the times.
Assuming you have installed nodejs and able to run node through terminal, Read through the following example
Tuna Fish example, it help you to understand the concept of injecting, updating, querying blockchin ledger. Also, It will help understand the usage of Nodejs backend and angularjs basic UI. or use the other examples as you have seen on the fabric-samples github repository. Fabric Samples. Balance Transfer will help you understand the channel and chaincode operations using Node JS. Build your first network will help you understand the configuration files(concentrate on docker-compose.yaml, scipt.js and byfn.js)
Then to answer your questions.
you just have to modify the mount drive config variables in docker-componse-cli.yaml. Then you can edit your startup script based on how you want to move chaincode to your peer.
you need to install chaincode on all the peers that are part of that channel. And you only need to instantiate chaincode once per channel.
Installation and instantiation combination is a powerful feature because it allows for a peer to interact with the same chaincode container across multiple channels. The only prerequisite is for the actual chaincode source files to be installed on the peer's file system. As such, if a piece of common chaincode is being used across dozens of channels, a peer would need only a single chaincode container to perform read/writes on all the channel ledgers.
To run the node js files on the fabric network.
welcome to blockchain world :)
I have been working on hyperledger fabric for some time. But I don’t understand where hyperledger composer comes in place . I do understand that it helps in visualizing the logic and transaction. But what I don’t get is how do you integrate it with fabric network? what does it create? Is it chaincode if not then what?
The Compose runtime is chain code that executes the business network archive artefacts created by the end-user.
Perhaps this will help?
https://blog.selman.org/2017/07/08/getting-started-with-blockchain-development/
The tech answer is that Hyperledger Composer is an abstraction layer over Hyperledger Fabric.
The practical answer is that it is awesome. Think how Angular and hundreds of other frameworks make web programming easier.
It is a framework where you can write your blockchain in Javascript and specify your data objects in an easy to understand text file. Throw in some querying, ACL stuff and pathways to use some nice opensource tools that let you do things like generate a Web API automatically and play around in a web environment without installing anything.
We are using it for the Integra Ledger Legal blockchain. (www.integraledger.com). I just spent the day working in it.
I am using HF for some time and trying different things regarding business network specification and configuration.
But, I have couple of question regarding best practices (if there are any yet) in using HF in production.
When we talk about using HF in production, should we use docker-compose-base.yaml, docker-compose-cli.yams, cofigtx.yaml.... etc. as files used to setup and configure our business network, and if not, can you please specify what is the best practice use-case?
Thank you for your answers.
You could use Docker Swarm/Compose with derivatives of the sample compose files you referenced, or you could use Kubernetes to manage a network (or subset of same). Project Cello is working on delivering such capability. The Ansible driver in particular has been demonstrated to work effectively - though it is far from a 1.0 level of maturity.
The reality is that you'll want to manage (likely) more than just four peer nodes all on the same VM or host, but manage multiple peers on multiple VMs/hosts even across multiple networks for a production deployment.
Further, you will obviously need to add management and monitoring to the deployed containers for a true production experience. The Hyperledger chat and mailing lists can be good sources of help and insight.