Paper trail: occurring challenges

Total count

I can't see anymore a way to get a total count of items when fetching lists. In Explorer we need to let users know how many pages of data there is (domains, accounts, etc).

Blocks predicates

Blocks predicates are empty for now. In Explorer we need to fetch a certain block by its height or hash. While fetching by height could be done via tricks with pagination, finding by hash is not possible in an efficient way.

upd: It is the reason why FindBlockHeaderByHash and FindTransationByHash singular queries still exist.

Transactions order

While FindBlocks returns blocks in a reverse order (height desc) and it makes sense, FindTransactions does not (haven't checked yet, only analysed code). I think transactions should also be sorted creation_time desc by default.

Inconsistent Pagination struct

• Is not constructable without the transparent_api feature. Ugly workaround via serde.
• start is Option<NonZero<u64>>, where None effectively means zero. Just make it u64 with 0 as default.
• start is u64, while limit is u32. The upper limit of these values is the same - maximum total amount of items returned. So they should be both either u64 or u32

upd: start is now offset.

hyperledger-iroha/iroha#4978

Data model immutability

Given the immutability of the structures, it is impossible to decompose them in most cases. The only way to access them is to get immutable references. Explorer re-wraps everything in its own structures. It could be done either by lots of clones, or by lots of lifetimes. It seems a bit insane given that in the context of Explorer there is not point of holding original data model structures and making its reflections for api responses. It would be convenient to own and move internal data directly.

It could be workarounded with the transparent_api feature, but it is supposed to be for internal use only.

upd: BlockSignature and TransactionSignature - not possible to access internals.

More issues:

• Since FindBlockHeaders returns just BlockHeaders, which doesn't contain block's hash, it is useless for Explorer now. Currently I use FindBlocks, but it also retrieves all block transactions, which amount might be huge and it is not always needed eagerly. Solution might be supporting something similar to the output of FindTransactions, which doesn't give just a transaction, but an additional field with a block hash.
• Thus, there is also a missing API - filtering transactions by block hash.

Recent status of this PR.

SQL-based backend

Decided to make a temporary SQL solution instead of relying on Iroha Query API. This both helps to implement everything we want in the explorer, and also highlights what changes are desirable from Iroha.

Currently backend uses a file-based pre-created static SQLite database. My plan is to incorporate a functionality into the program that will "scrap" Iroha on updates and re-create a SQLite database in-memory. Not a scalable solution, but should work fine for not-very-large Iroha.

@VladislavPopovSR please note recent changes:

• Fixed filtering txs by block hash
• Added support to filter instructions by their kind and the authority. This allows to have a table of instructions on the account details page.
• When getting instructions, only committed ones are returned. It is not configurable. I thought it doesn't make sense for now to see rejected instructions - users can see rejected transactions already.
• Added status field to transactions, added filter by status, removed error bool flag, added rejection_reason nullable field for detailed transaction object.

Recent updates related to frontend:

• Transaction:
  • rename instructions to executable
  • remove block_hash, add block (height)
• Instruction:
  • add transaction_status
• GET /transactions: remove block_hash query param, add block
• GET /instructions: don't filter only committed ones, return all. TODO: add transaction_status query param filter

cc: @VladislavPopovSR

This work is sort of finished for now. I've updated PR's description.

I think we should undraft this PR once Iroha "MVP" (release candidate 1) is released on crates.io.

GET /instructions now supports two new filters: by block and by transaction_status.

cc: @VladislavPopovSR

Removed consensus_estimation field from Block schema.

cc: @VladislavPopovSR

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