BigchainDB Collection

Use BigchainDB (scalable blockchain database) in your Meteor application just like you are using Mongo.

Project stage

Experimental.

Magic behind the scenes

Your application is still reading and writing to Mongo. Anything you write into Mongo is automatically written into BigchainDB in the background (triggered by after.insert hooks). And vice versa: Anything that is written directly into BigchainDB is written into Mongo (triggered by BDB event stream).

In short, Mongo database acts as a buffer between your application and BigchainDB database.

• You can mix/join "off-chain" and "on-chain" data

• Database writes are "reactive" (changes are instantly visible to all subscribed clients).

• You can change any existing Meteor application to use BigchainDB with minimal code modifications (partly or entirelly).

Usage

Step 1

Add perak:bigchaindb-collection package to your application

meteor add perak:bigchaindb-collection

Step 2

In both client and server scope, instead defining your collection as new Mongo.Collection define it as new BDBCollection

1
2export const Fruits = new BDBCollection("fruits");
3

Step 3

In server scope, define BDBConnection (not to be confused with BDBCollection), register your collections with the connection, provide keypair generator function and connect to BDB server:

1
2import { Fruits } from "path to file where your collection is defined";
3
4// define BDB connection
5global.BDBC = BDBConection = new BDBConnection({ namespace: "test-app" });
6
7// register all your BDB collections with the BDB connection
8BDBC.registerCollection(Fruits);
9
10// provide keypair generator
11BDBC.onKeypairRequest = function(userId, collectionName, doc) {
12	// Return keypair which will be used to sign BDB transaction.
13	// Most likely you will keep user's keypair in Meteor.users collection
14	// and here you can retrieve it based on userId argument.
15	// But, for purpose of this demo, let's generate dummy keypair
16	// based on fixed password
17	return BDBC.keypairFromPassword("password");
18};
19
20Meteor.startup({
21	BDBC.connect({
22		"url": "http://localhost:9984/api/v1/",
23		"eventsUrl": "ws://0.0.0.0:9985/api/v1/streams/valid_transactions",
24		"appId": "",
25		"appKey": "",
26		"namespace": "test-app"
27	});
28});
29

And... voilà! Your application is now storing data in BigchainDB - the scalable blockchain database.

Appendix

Install BigchainDB 1.3.0 (dev)

For your local machine or dev server use following script:

docker pull bigchaindb/bigchaindb:1.3.0

docker run \
  --interactive \
  --rm \
  --tty \
  --volume $HOME/bigchaindb_docker:/data \
  --env BIGCHAINDB_DATABASE_HOST=172.17.0.1 \
  bigchaindb/bigchaindb:1.3.0 \
  -y configure \
  mongodb

docker run \
  --detach \
  --name=mongodb \
  --publish=27017:27017 \
  --restart=always \
  --volume=$HOME/mongodb_docker/db:/data/db \
  --volume=$HOME/mongodb_docker/configdb:/data/configdb \
  mongo:3.4.9 --replSet=bigchain-rs

docker run \
  --detach \
  --name=bigchaindb \
  --publish=59984:9984 \
  --restart=always \
  --volume=$HOME/bigchaindb_docker:/data \
  -e "VIRTUAL_HOST=URL_AT_WHICH_THIS_BDB_IS_EXPOSED" \
  -e "LETSENCRYPT_HOST=URL_AT_WHICH_THIS_BDB_IS_EXPOSED" \
  -e "LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL=YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS" \
  bigchaindb/bigchaindb:1.3.0 \
  start

To be continued...