Create-BlockchainNetwork-IBPV20

Creating a basic Blockchain network using the IBM Blockchain Platform

Welcome to the first in a series of building a Blockchain application using the IBM Blockchain Platform. Part 1 will show you how to set up your Blockchain network on the IBM Cloud. This will be the "Hello World" of Hyperledger samples using the IBM Blockchain Platform - so beginner developers should be able to manage this. This pattern shows you how to test your network by packaging your smart contract using the IBM Blockchain Platform extension on VS Code and then deploying it onto the network. The network uses Hyperledger Fabric V1.4.

Hyperledger Fabric is a blockchain framework implementation and one of the Hyperledger projects hosted by The Linux Foundation. Intended as a foundation for developing applications or solutions with a modular architecture, Hyperledger Fabric allows components, such as consensus and membership services, to be plug-and-play.

In Part 2, we will explore more about creating a complex network with multiple participants and using Access Control Rules (ACL) to provide them network access permissions. In this journey, you will run Hyperledger Fabric on the Cloud.

When you have completed this code pattern, you will understand how to:

• Package the smart contract using IBM Blockchain Platform Extension for VS Code.
• Setup a Hyperledger Fabric network on IBM Blockchain Platform.
• Install and instantiate smart contract package onto the IBM Blockchain Platform.
• Interact with the contract and execute transactions using the SDK.

Architecture flow

1. The developer develops a smart contract using Node.js.
2. Use the IBM Blockchain Platform Extension for VS Code to package the smart contract.
3. Setup and launch the IBM Blockchain Platform service.
4. The IBM Blockchain Platform enables the creation of a network onto a IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, enabling installation and instantiation of the smart contract on the network.
5. The Node.js application uses the Fabic SDK to interact with the deployed network on IBM Blockchain Platform and issues transactions.

Included components

• IBM Blockchain Platform gives you total control of your blockchain network with a user interface that can simplify and accelerate your journey to deploy and manage blockchain components on the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service.
• IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service creates a cluster of compute hosts and deploys highly available containers. A Kubernetes cluster lets you securely manage the resources that you need to quickly deploy, update, and scale applications.
• IBM Blockchain Platform Extension for VS Code is designed to assist users in developing, testing, and deploying smart contracts - including connecting to Hyperledger Fabric environments.

Featured technologies

• Hyperledger Fabric v1.4 is a platform for distributed ledger solutions, underpinned by a modular architecture that delivers high degrees of confidentiality, resiliency, flexibility, and scalability.
• Node.js is an open source, cross-platform JavaScript run-time environment that executes server-side JavaScript code.

Prerequisites

• IBM Cloud account
• Node v8.x or v10.x and npm v6.x or greater
• VSCode version 1.38.0 or greater
• IBM Blockchain Platform Extension for VSCode

Running the application

Follow these steps to set up and run this code pattern. The steps are described in detail below.

Steps

1. Clone the repo
2. Package the smart contract
3. Create IBM Cloud services
4. Build a network
5. Deploy Blockchain-network Smart Contract on the network
6. Connect application to the network
7. Run the application

1. Clone the repo

Clone this repository in a folder your choice:

git clone https://github.com/IBM/Create-BlockchainNetwork-IBPV20

2. Package the smart contract

We will use the IBM Blockchain Platform extension on VS Code to package the smart contract.

If you have not done so already, you will need to install the IBM Blockchain Platform VSCode extension — you’ll also need to install the latest version of VSCode to do this. To see if you have the latest version go to Help -> Check for updates. If VSCode exits at this point, it likely means you don’t have the latest version. If so, update your VSCode (using the link provided earlier) and once you’re done, click on extensions in the sidebar on the left side of your screen. At the top, search the extensions marketplace for IBM Blockchain Platform and click on Install. You should see a status of “Installing” and eventually “Installed” — then click on reload.

• Open Visual Studio code and open the contract folder from Create-BlockchainNetwork repository that was cloned earlier. It is important that you are opening the contract folder and not the entire Create-BlockchainNetwork directory; otherwise you will see an error that states that it doesn't understand what programming language you are using.

• Press the F1 key to see the different VS code options. Choose IBM Blockchain Platform: Package Open Project.

• Click the IBM Blockchain Platform extension button on the left. This will show the packaged contracts on top and the blockchain connections on the bottom.

• Next, right click on the packaged contract (in this case, select [email protected]) to export it and choose Export Package.

• Choose a location on your machine and save the .cds file. We will use this packaged smart contract later to deploy on the IBM Blockchain Platform service.

Now, we will start setting up the different services required for configuring our Hyperledger Fabric network on the IBM Cloud and for running our application using this network.

3. Create IBM Cloud services

• Create the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. You can find the service in the Catalog. For this code pattern, we can use the Free cluster, and give it a name. Note, that the IBM Cloud allows one instance of a free cluster which expires after 30 days. Note: it could take 20 minutes for the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service setup to complete.

• Create the IBM Blockchain Platform service on the IBM Cloud. You can find the service in the Catalog, and give it a name.

• After your kubernetes cluster is up and running, you can deploy your IBM Blockchain Platform on the cluster. Again - wait for the IBM Cloud Kubernetes service to indicate it was deployed. The IBM Blockchain Platform service walks through few steps and finds your cluster on the IBM Cloud to deploy the service on.

• Once the Blockchain Platform is deployed on the Kubernetes cluster, you can launch the console to start configuring your blockchain network.

4. Build a network

We will build a network as provided by the IBM Blockchain Platform documentation. This will include creating a channel with a single peer organization with its own MSP and CA (Certificate Authority), and an orderer organization with its own MSP and CA. We will create the respective identities to deploy peers and operate nodes.

Create your peer organization CA

• Navigate to the Nodes tab in the left navigation and click Add Certificate Authority.
• Click Create an IBM Cloud Certificate Authority and Next.
• Give it a CA display name of Org1 CA and click Next.
• Specify an CA Administrator Enroll ID of admin and CA Administrator Enroll Secret of adminpw, then click Next.
• Review the summary and click Add Certificate Authority.

Associate the peer organization CA admin identity

• In the Nodes tab, select the Org1 CA once it is running (indicated by the green box in the tile).
• Click Associate identity on the CA overview panel.
• On the side panel, select Enroll ID.
• Provide an Enroll ID of admin and an Enroll secret of adminpw. Use the default value of Org1 CA Identity for the Identity display name.
• Click Associate identity to add the identity into your wallet and associate the admin identity with the Org1 CA.

Use peer organization CA to register the peer and org1 admin identities

• Select the Org1 CA Certificate Authority and ensure the admin identity that was created for the CA is visible in the table.
• We will register an admin for our organization "org1". Click on the Register User button. Give an Enroll ID of org1admin, and Enroll Secret of org1adminpw. Set the Type for this identity as client. We can specify to Use root affiliation or uncheck this field and select from any of the affiliated organizations from the drop-down list. We will leave the Maximum enrollments field blank. Click Next.
• We will not be adding any attributes to this user. Click Register user.
• We will repeat the process to create an identity of the peer. Click on the Register User button. Give an Enroll ID of peer1, and Enroll Secret of peer1pw. Set the Type for this identity as peer. We can specify to Use root affiliation or uncheck this field and select from any of the affiliated organizations from the drop-down list. Click Next.
• We will not be adding any attributes to this user. Click Register user.

Create the peer organization MSP definition

• Navigate to the Organizations tab in the left navigation and click Create MSP definition.
• Enter the MSP Display name as Org1MSP and an MSP ID of Org1MSP.
• Under Root Certificate Authority details, specify the peer CA that we created Org1 CA as the root CA for the organization.
• Give the Enroll ID and Enroll secret for your organization admin, org1admin and org1adminpw. Then, give the Identity name as Org1 Admin.
• Click the Generate button to enroll this identity as the admin of your organization and export the identity to the wallet. Click Export to export the admin certificates to your file system. Finally click Create MSP definition.

Create a peer

• Navigate to the Nodes tab in the left navigation and click Add peer.
• Click Create an IBM Cloud peer and then click Next.
• Give the Peer display name as Peer Org1 and click Next.
• On the next screen, select Org1 CA as the Certificate Authority. Then, give the Peer enroll ID and Peer enroll secret for the peer identity that you created for your peer, that is, peer1, and peer1pw. Select the Organization MSP as Org1MSP, from the drop-down list. Leave the TLS CSR hostname blank. Click Next.
• The next step is to Associate an identity with this peer to make it the admin of your peer. Select your peer admin identity Org1 Admin and click Next.
• Review the summary and click Add peer.

Create your orderer organization CA

• Navigate to the Nodes tab in the left navigation and click Add Certificate Authority.
• Click Create an IBM Cloud Certificate Authority and Next.
• Give it a CA display name of Orderer CA and click Next.
• Specify an CA Administrator Enroll ID of admin and CA Administrator Enroll Secret of adminpw, then click Next.
• Review the summary and click Add Certificate Authority.

Associate the orderer organization CA admin identity

• In the Nodes tab, select the Orderer CA once it is running (indicated by the green box in the tile).
• Click Associate identity on the CA overview panel.
• On the side panel, select Enroll ID.
• Provide an Enroll ID of admin and an Enroll secret of adminpw. Use the default value of Orderer CA Identity for the Identity display name.
• Click Associate identity to add the identity into your wallet and associate the admin identity with the Orderer CA.

Use orderer organization CA to register orderer and orderer admin identities

• Select the Orderer CA Certificate Authority and ensure the admin identity that was created for the CA is visible in the table.
• We will register an admin for the "orderer" organization. Click on the Register User button. Give an Enroll ID of ordereradmin, and Enroll Secret of ordereradminpw. Set the Type for this identity as client. We can specify to Use root affiliation or uncheck this field and select from any of the affiliated organizations from the drop-down list. We will leave the Maximum enrollments field blank. Click Next.
• We will not be adding any attributes to this user. Click Register user.
• We will repeat the process to create an identity of the orderer. Click on the Register User button. Give an Enroll ID of orderer1, and Enroll Secret of orderer1pw. Set the Type for this identity as orderer. We can specify to Use root affiliation or uncheck this field and select from any of the affiliated organizations from the drop-down list. Click Next.
• We will not be adding any attributes to this user. Click Register user.

Create the orderer organization MSP definition

• Navigate to the Organizations tab in the left navigation and click Create MSP definition.
• Enter the MSP Display name as OrdererMSP and an MSP ID of OrdererMSP.
• Under Root Certificate Authority details, specify the peer CA that we created Orderer CA as the root CA for the organization.
• Give the Enroll ID and Enroll secret for your organization admin, ordereradmin and ordereradminpw. Then, give the Identity name as Orderer Admin.
• Click the Generate button to enroll this identity as the admin of your organization and export the identity to the wallet. Click Export to export the admin certificates to your file system. Finally click Create MSP definition.

Create an orderer

• Navigate to the Nodes tab in the left navigation and click Add ordering service.
• Click Create an IBM Cloud Ordering service and then click Next.
• Give the Ordering service display name as Orderer and click Next.
• On the next screen, select Orderer CA as the Certificate Authority. Then, give the Ordering service enroll ID and Ordering service enroll secret for the peer identity that you created for your orderer, that is, orderer1, and orderer1pw. Select the Organization MSP as OrdererMSP, from the drop-down list. Leave the TLS CSR hostname blank. Click Next.
• The next step is to Associate an identity with this peer to make it the admin of your peer. Select your peer admin identity Orderer Admin and click Next.
• Review the summary and click Add ordering service.

Add organization as Consortium Member on the orderer to transact

• Navigate to the Nodes tab, and click on the Orderer that we created.
• Under Consortium Members, click Add organization.
• From the drop-down list, select Org1MSP, as this is the MSP that represents the peer's organization "Org1".
• Click Add organization.

Create the channel

• Navigate to the Channels tab in the left navigation and click Create channel.
• Give the Channel name as mychannel.
• Select the orderer you created, Orderer from the Ordering service drop-down list.
• Under Organizations, select Org1MSP (Org1MSP) from the drop-down list to add the organization "Org1" as a member of this channel. Click Add button. Set the permissions for this member as Operator.
• Scroll down to the Channel creator organization section and select Org1MSP (Org1MSP) from the dropdown as the Channel creator MSP and select Org1 Admin from the dropdown under Identity.
• Click Create channel.

Join your peer to the channel

• Click Join channel to add a peer to the channel.
• Select your Orderer as the Ordering service and click Next.
• Enter the name of the Channel as mychannel and click Next.
• Next we need to select which peers should be added to the channel. In our case, we just want to add the peer we created under "Org1". Select Peer Org1 .
• Click Join channel.

5. Deploy Blockchain Network Smart Contract on the network

Install a smart contract

• Navigate to the Smart contracts tab in the left navigation and click Install smart contract.
• Browse to the location of the Blockchain Network smart contract package file (it is probably named [email protected]), which we packaged earlier using the IBM Blockchain Platform extension for Visual Studio code.
• Click on Add file and find your packaged smart contract.
• Once the contract is uploaded, click Install smart contract.

Instantiate smart contract

• Under Installed smart contracts, find the smart contract from the list (Note: ours is called blockchain-network) installed on our peer and click Instantiate from the overflow menu on the right side of the row.
• On the side panel that opens, select the channel, mychannel on which to instantiate the smart contract. Click Next.
• Select the organization members to be included in the endorsement policy. In our case, we need to select Org1MSP. Click Next.
• We can skip the Setup private data collection step and simply click Next.
• Give the Function name of instantiate and leave Arguments blank. Note: instantiate is the method in the my-contract.js contract file that initiates the smart contracts on the peer. Some may name this initLedger.
• Click Instantiate.

6. Connect application to the network

Connect with sdk through connection profile

• Scroll down to the Instantiated smart contracts section and find the "blockchain-network" contract in the list. Click on Connect with SDK from the overflow menu on the right side of the row.
• From the dropdown for MSP for connection choose Org1MSP.
• From the dropdown for Certificate Authority choose Org1 CA.
• Download the connection profile by scrolling down and clicking Download Connection Profile. This will download the connection json which we will use to establish a connection between the Node.js web application and the Blockchain Network.
• You can click Close once the download completes.

Create an application admin

• Navigate to the Nodes tab in the left navigation, and under Certificate Authorities, choose your organization CA, Org1 CA.
• Click on Register user.
• Give an Enroll ID of app-admin and Enroll Secret of app-adminpw. Set the Type for this identity as client. We can specify to Use root affiliation or uncheck this field and select from any of the affiliated organizations from the drop-down list. We will leave the Maximum enrollments field blank. Click Next.
• Under Attributes, click on Add attribute. Give attribute as hf.Registrar.Roles = *. This will allow this identity to act as a registrar and issue identities for our app. Click Add attribute.
• Click Register user.

Update application connection

• Copy the connection profile you downloaded into the application folder.
• Update the config.json file with:
  • The connection json file name you downloaded.
  • The enroll id and enroll secret for your app admin, which we earlier provided as app-admin and app-adminpw.
  • The orgMSP ID, which we provided as Org1MSP.
  • The caName, which can be found in your connection json file under "organization" -> "Org1MSP" -> certificateAuthorities". This would be like an IP address and a port.
  • The username you would like to register.
  • Update gateway discovery to { enabled: true, asLocalhost: false } to connect to IBM Blockchain Platform.

 {
    "connection_file": "mychannel_blockchain-network_profile.json",
    "channel_name": "mychannel",
    "smart_contract_name": "blockchain-network",
    "appAdmin": "app-admin",
    "appAdminSecret": "app-adminpw",
    "orgMSPID": "org1msp",
    "caName": "169.46.208.151:30404",
    "userName": "user1",
    "gatewayDiscovery": { "enabled": true, "asLocalhost": false }
 }

7. Run the application

Enroll admin

• First, navigate to the application directory, and install the node dependencies.

  cd application
  npm install
  

• Run the enrollAdmin.js script

  node enrollAdmin.js
  

• You should see the following in the terminal:

  msg: Successfully enrolled admin user app-admin and imported it into the wallet
  

• Run the invoke-transactions.js script to execute the transactions on the smart contract

  node invoke-transactions.js
  

• You should see the following in the terminal:

  Wallet path: /Users/snyk/CognitiveApps/code-patterns/Create-BlockchainNetwork-IBPV20/Create-BlockchainNetwork-IBPV20/application/wallet
  
  Submit AddTrader transaction.
  addTraderAResponse: 
  {"traderId":"traderA","firstName":"Carlos","lastName":"Roca"}
  addTraderAResponse_JSON.parse: 
  { traderId: 'traderA', firstName: 'Carlos', lastName: 'Roca' }
  
  Submit AddTrader transaction.
  addTraderBResponse: 
  {"traderId":"traderB","firstName":"Lisa","lastName":"Smith"}
  addTraderBResponse_JSON.parse: 
  { traderId: 'traderB', firstName: 'Lisa', lastName: 'Smith' }
  
  Submit AddCommodity transaction.
  addCommodityResponse: 
  {"tradingSymbol":"commodityA","description":"farm-commodity","traderId":"traderA"}
  addCommodityResponse_JSON.parse: 
  { tradingSymbol: 'commodityA',
    description: 'farm-commodity',
    traderId: 'traderA' }
  
  Submit Commodity trade transaction.
  commodityTradeResponse: 
  {"description":"farm-commodity","traderId":"traderB","tradingSymbol":"commodityA"}
  commodityTradeResponse_JSON.parse: 
  { description: 'farm-commodity',
    traderId: 'traderB',
    tradingSymbol: 'commodityA' }
  

Troubleshooting

• If you receive the following error on submitting transaction: error: [Client.js]: Channel not found for name mychannel

It is safe to ignore this error because the IBM Blockchain Platform service has service discovery enabled by default. (In order to use service discovery to find other peers, please define anchor peers for your channel in the UI). If you really want the message to go away you can add the channels section to the connection profile, but it is a warning rather than a true error telling the user the channel is found but not in the connection profile.

As an example you can manually add the following json and update the IP address and ports manually:

"channels": {
        "mychannel": {
            "orderers": [
                "169.46.208.151:32078"
            ],
            "peers": {
                "169.46.208.151:31017": {}
            }
        }
    },

Extending the code pattern

This application can be expanded in a couple of ways:

• Create a wallet for every member and use the member's wallet to interact with the application.
• Add a UI application in place of the invoke.js node application to execute the transactions.

Links

• Hyperledger Fabric Docs
• Zero to Blockchain
• IBM Code Patterns for Blockchain

License

This code pattern is licensed under the Apache Software License, Version 2. Separate third-party code objects invoked within this code pattern are licensed by their respective providers pursuant to their own separate licenses. Contributions are subject to the Developer Certificate of Origin, Version 1.1 (DCO) and the Apache Software License, Version 2.

Apache Software License (ASL) FAQ