py Substrate Identity Searcher

Identity searcher for Substrate-based chains with identity pallet installed.

Context

The identities pallet allows an account owner to register real-world information alongside their account on-chain. This is helpful for validator identification, Council member metadata, and more.

Please read more about substrate based identities at the official wikihttps://wiki.polkadot.network/docs/en/learn-identity

Installation

git clone https://github.com/al3mart/substrate_identity_searcher.git
cd substrate_identity_searcher

Use of virtualenv is recomended

pip install virtualenv
virtualenv .
source bin/activate
pip install substrate-interface

And finally run it with a simple python ./searcher.py [options] arg

Functionality

This searcher is developed in a fairly simple script, that will set a connection with a network node of your election, this node endpoint is provided by the --endpoint option, also, user is able to choose a file for caching results by setting the --cache option.

Default Values:

• endpoint: http://127.0.0.1:9933
• cache: ./.identities_cache.json

So, if user is confortable using the default values there is no need of providing these options.

Take into account that public nodes are not exposing HTTP endpoints, so using WSS is recomended.

In the other hand, is mandatory for the user to provide arg, from now on target, being this one the string to be looked for in the identities' metadata.

At any moment user can run ./python searcher.py <-h, --help> for displaying all the command information.

Running this script will end up retrieving all identities that contain the given target at some part of their information fields.

Notice that target can not only contain a simple string, but also an identity information field filter, being the existing fields at the moment of writing the following ones:

• additional
• display
• legal
• web
• riot
• email
• pgpFingerprint
• image
• twitter

Filters can be express within target like this filter:str_to_be_found. Only accepting one field filter from the list above for the moment.

It is worth mentioning that when running this script, identities in the result list will not only be the ones with information that completely matches our target, but also identities which have information that is not exactly equals to target, but contains target at some point.

Given the magnitude of the problem, and being metadata whatever information owners of those identities wanted to input, it is difficult to find an efficient solution at first sight, and for that, a little cache system is included, so the heavy work is only done once.

Features

• inputting target return all identities with target anywhere in any of their fields.
• inputting filter:target filter by filter field only, and return all identities with target anywhere in their filter field.
• partial matches are included, e.g. target "bob" will match with identities containing "bobamazoo".
• Persistent cache system to speed up repetitive requests.

Dependencies

• substrate-interface

Possible upgrades & ongoing work

• While developing this script I have been able to get a flawless connection with the node I have been using, a local polkadot node by running the latest polkadot binary with --dev flag, but it has not been the same when connecting to live networks, as I have been receiving Err(UnsafeRpcError), and for the time being I still don't know the cause of that denial.

• Identities request could be done in a separate thread