The WebSocket Event Stream API

Important

The WebSocket Event Stream runs on a different port than the Web API. The default port for the Web API is 9984, while the one for the Event Stream is 9985.

BigchainDB provides real-time event streams over the WebSocket protocol with the Event Stream API. Connecting to an event stream from your application enables a BigchainDB node to notify you as events occur, such as new validated transactions.

Demoing the API

You may be interested in demoing the Event Stream API with the WebSocket echo test to familiarize yourself before attempting an integration.

Determining Support for the Event Stream API

It’s a good idea to make sure that the node you’re connecting with has advertised support for the Event Stream API. To do so, send a HTTP GET request to the node’s API Root Endpoint (e.g. http://localhost:9984/api/v1/) and check that the response contains a streams property:

{
 ...,
 "streams": "ws://example.com:9985/api/v1/streams/valid_transactions",
 ...
}

Connection Keep-Alive

The Event Stream API initially does not provide any mechanisms for connection keep-alive other than enabling TCP keepalive on each open WebSocket connection. In the future, we may add additional functionality to handle ping/pong frames or payloads designed for keep-alive.

Streams

Each stream is meant as a unidirectional communication channel, where the BigchainDB node is the only party sending messages. Any messages sent to the BigchainDB node will be ignored.

Streams will always be under the WebSocket protocol (so ws:// or wss://) and accessible as extensions to the /api/v<version>/streams/ API root URL (for example, validated transactions would be accessible under /api/v1/streams/valid_transactions). If you’re running your own BigchainDB instance and need help determining its root URL, then see the page titled Determining the API Root URL.

All messages sent in a stream are in the JSON format.

Note

For simplicity, BigchainDB initially only provides a stream for all validated transactions. In the future, we may provide streams for other information, such as new blocks, new votes, or invalid transactions. We may also provide the ability to filter the stream for specific qualities, such as a specific output‘s public_key.

If you have specific use cases that you think would fit as part of this API, feel free to reach out via Gitter or email.

Valid Transactions

/valid_transactions

Streams an event for any newly validated transactions. Message bodies contain the transaction’s ID, associated asset ID, and containing block’s ID.

Example message:

{
    "transaction_id": "<sha3-256 hash>",
    "asset_id": "<sha3-256 hash>",
    "block_id": "<sha3-256 hash>"
}

Note

Transactions in BigchainDB are validated in batches (“blocks”) and will, therefore, be streamed in batches. Each block can contain up to a 1000 transactions, ordered by the time at which they were included in the block. The /valid_transactions stream will send these transactions in the same order that the block stored them in, but this does NOT guarantee that you will recieve the events in that same order.