Publishing to chainStorage

Contracts can use notifiers and subscriptions to publish to clients. To publish data visible to vstorage queries, contracts should connect a subscriber to a chainStorage node.

Deployment Capabilities for Publishing to chainStorage

In Adding Parameter Governance to a Contract, storageNode and marshaller are passed to the contract in its privateArgs so it can publish to chainStorage.

In dapp-agoric-basics, the startSwapContract uses 2 permitted deployment capabilities, chainStorage and board and uses them to make the privateArgs:

const marshaller = await E(board).getPublishingMarshaller();
const storageNode = await E(chainStorage).makeChildNode(contractName);

A Marshaller is parameterized by functions for mapping unforgeable object identities to plain data slot references and back. Using the board name service gives consistent slot references across contracts. As discussed in Marshalling Amounts and Instances, this lets off-chain clients use the same @endo/marshal API.

The chainStorage node corresponds to the published key in the vstorage hierarchy. Using E(chainStorage).makeChildNode(contractName) gives the contract access to write to the published.swaparoo key and all keys under it.

The swaparoo contract delegates the rest of publishing governance parameters to the @agoric/governance package.

Publishing structured data to chainStorage

Let's look at the Inter Protocol assetReserve.js contract to get more of the details. It publishes to published.reserve.metrics data of the form

/**
 * @typedef {object} MetricsNotification
 * @property {AmountKeywordRecord} allocations
 * @property {Amount<'nat'>} shortfallBalance shortfall from liquidation that
 *   has not yet been compensated.
 * @property {Amount<'nat'>} totalFeeMinted total Fee tokens minted to date
 * @property {Amount<'nat'>} totalFeeBurned total Fee tokens burned to date
 */

For example:

    {
      allocations: {
        Fee: {
          brand: Object @Alleged: IST brand {},
          value: 64561373455n,
        },
        ATOM: {
          brand: Object @Alleged: ATOM brand {},
          value: 6587020n
        },
      },
      shortfallBalance: {
        brand: Object @Alleged: IST brand {},
        value: 5747205025n,
      },
      totalFeeBurned: {
        brand: Object @Alleged: IST brand {},
        value: n,
      },
      totalFeeMinted: {
        brand: Object @Alleged: IST brand {},
        value: 0n,
      },
    },

The method that writes this data is:

        writeMetrics() {
          const { state } = this;
          const metrics = harden({
            allocations: state.collateralSeat.getCurrentAllocation(),
            shortfallBalance: state.shortfallBalance,
            totalFeeMinted: state.totalFeeMinted,
            totalFeeBurned: state.totalFeeBurned,
          });
          void state.metricsKit.recorder.write(metrics);
        },

The metricsKit is made with a makeRecorderKit function:

        metricsKit: makeRecorderKit(
          metricsNode,
          /** @type {import('@agoric/zoe/src/contractSupport/recorder.js').TypedMatcher<MetricsNotification>} */ (
            M.any()
          ),
        ),

We "prepare" (in the exo sense) that function for making a RecorderKit using prepareRecorderKitMakers.

const { makeRecorderKit } = prepareRecorderKitMakers(
  baggage,
  privateArgs.marshaller
);

The contract gets baggage, along with privateArgs when it starts in the usual way for upgradable contracts:

/**
 * Asset Reserve holds onto assets for the Inter Protocol, and ...
 *
 * @param {{
 *   ...
 *   marshaller: ERef<Marshaller>,
 *   storageNode: ERef<StorageNode>,
 * }} privateArgs
 * @param {Baggage} baggage
 */
export const prepare = async (zcf, privateArgs, baggage) => {
  // ...
};

The reserve uses its StorageNode and makes a child to get metricsNode:

const metricsNode = await E(storageNode).makeChildNode('metrics');

The marshaller is used to serialize data structures such as MetricsNotification above.

Deployment Capabilities for the reserve

To start assetReserve, the setupReserve function again supplies the two relevant privateArgs, marshaller and storageNode:

const STORAGE_PATH = 'reserve';
const storageNode = await E(storageNode).makeChildNode(STORAGE_PATH);
const marshaller = await E(board).getReadonlyMarshaller();

The setupReserve function gets chainStorage and board deployment capabilities passed in:

export const setupReserve = async ({
  consume: {
    board,
    chainStorage,
// ...
  },
// ...
}) => { ... };