@pooltogether/tightbeam

Tightbeam

Test Coverage

Tightbeam is an extension for Apollo Client that allows you to communicate with Ethereum smart contracts.

Features:

• Make calls to smart contracts. Calls are batched using Multicall when supported by the network.
• Get current network and account
• Get blocks
• Execute transactions

Apollo Client is a powerful framework that allows web applications to communicate with GraphQL servers. By leveraging it's powerful caching and the Multicall smart contract it's possible to build extremely fast Ethereum dApps.

Tutorial

For a complete walkthrough of building a dapp and adding a subgraph to it checkout the ETHDenver workshop. It will guide you through dapp creation and integrating a subgraph.

Installation

Tightbeam is published under the scoped package @pooltogether/tightbeam.

Within a project you can install it:

$ yarn add @pooltogether/tightbeam

Dependencies

Tested Dependency	Version
Ethers.js	4.x
Apollo Client	2.6.x
Apollo Link State	0.4.x

Note: The latest version of Apollo Client doesn't handle errors correctly when using client resolvers. See issue 4575. Errors will be swallowed.

Instead, we recommended that you stick with Apollo Link State until the client has been updated.

Setup

The simplest way to get started is to attach the Tightbeam resolvers to ApolloClient:

import { Tightbeam } from 'tightbeam'

import { withClientState } from 'apollo-link-state'
import { InMemoryCache } from 'apollo-cache-inmemory'
import { createHttpLink } from 'apollo-link-http'

const tb = new Tightbeam()

const cache = new InMemoryCache()

// Ensure that the expected defaults are present
cache.writeData(tb.defaultCacheData())

// Now attach the Tightbeam resolvers
const stateLink = withClientState({
  cache,
  resolvers: tb.resolvers()
})

const httpLink = createHttpLink({
  uri: 'https://thegraph.com/yourgraphurl'
});

client = new ApolloClient({
  cache,
  link: ApolloLink.from([stateLink, httpLink])
})

Note the use of apollo-link-state; it's required for multicall batching to work.

The defaultCacheData() function takes one optional argument that is your desired default state. It will merge the two.

The resolvers() function takes one optional argument of resolvers. It will merge the Tightbeam resolvers into the passed object.

Now you can talk to Ethereum!

Usage

Let's query for the current network and account:

const result = await client.query({
  query: gql`
    query addressAndNetwork {
      address @client
      network @client
    }
  `
})

console.log(result)
/*

{
  address: "0x1234...",
  network: { 
    name: 'homestead',
    chainId: 1
  }
}

*/

Notice the @client directive; this tells Apollo Client that we are querying a client resolver.

Querying a Contract

To query a contract, you must first add a contract to the abi mapping:

const erc20Abi = // ... get the abi from some where

// addContract(name, networkId, address, abi)
tb.abiMapping.addContract('Dai', 1, '0x6b175474e89094c44da98b954eedeac495271d0f', erc20Abi)

Now you can query functions:

const result = await client.query({
  query: gql`
    query daiQuery {
      name: call(name: Dai, fn: name) @client
      totalSupply: call(name: Dai, fn: totalSupply) @client
    }
  `
})

We can ask for our balance as well:

const result = await client.query({
  query: gql`
    query myBalanceQuery($address: String!) {
      balance: call(name; Dai, fn: balanceOf, params[$address]) @client
    }
  `,
  variables: {
    address: '0xc73e0383f3aff3215e6f04b0331d58cecf0ab849'
  }
})

The query defines an address variable that can configure the call.