Beet Maintainers' Handbook 1. Preparation for adding new API methods

Beet uses the transaction builder of bitsharesjs behind the scenes in order to generate and sign transactions.

The flow of generating, signing and broadcasting a transaction is as follows (where tr is a transaction builder instance):

 tr.add_type_operation(operation.op_type, operation.op_data);
 tr.set_required_fees().then(async () => {
        tr.add_signer(pKey, pKey.toPublicKey().toPublicKeyString());
        let result = await tr.broadcast();
});

As you can see, the dynamic part is the op_type and op_data of the required transaction.

In order to add a new API method to Beet, we need to generate these 2 objects from the API method payload.

The relevant files for PREPARING a new API method for addition are:

https://github.com/bitshares/beet/blob/master/src/lib/Actions.js where the new API name is added to the list of constants.

and

https://github.com/bitshares/beet/blob/master/src/lib/Operations.js where the API method payload is transformed to the relevant operation object.

For example, a new transfer() API method would need a payload of rcpt_account_id, asset_id, amount, memo

We would simply add a case 'transfer' to the Operations.js file where the op_type would be set to transfer and payload data would be used to generate the following op_data:

{
    fee: {
        amount: 0,
        asset_id: asset_id
    },
    from: beet_account_id
    to: rcpt_account_id
    amount: { amount: amount, asset_id: asset_id },
    memo: memo_object
}

(More details about how to generate this & memo object here: https://github.com/bitshares/bitsharesjs/blob/master/examples/transfer.js)

With the above example, and the current voteFor API method implementation, I hope others can feel confident enough to propose/add more possible API calls.