bPanel Utils

bpanel-utils is a separate npm module that plugin developers can use to solve commonly encountered errors. This allows for some standardization around certain operations. Developers that feel they have a utility that can help other plugin devs should also be encouraged to extend this utility library.

Install locally to your plugin with:

npm install --save-dev '@bpanel/bpanel-utils'

and then import into your project files as needed.

Available Utilities

BPClient

BPClient is a utility client to manage connections to a node within your app. It is configured to make connections via the proxy server where your bPanel app is served from, but should support custom connections either directly to a remote node or even one running on the client. It will support connecting to a bcoin, bcash, or handshake node.

Example:

import { BPClient } from '@bpanel/bpanel-utils';

(async function() {
  const client = new BPClient({ id: 'test', chain: 'bcoin' });

  // get all available clients from your server
  const clients = await client.getClients();

  // get default client of server if one is set
  const defaultClient = await client.getDefault();

  // get info for a specific client. Defaults to
  // the id of your client
  const getClientInfo = await client.getClientInfo();

  // get a node client to query your node with
  const nodeClient = client.getNodeClient();

  // use node client to run normal node api operations
  const nodeInfo = await nodeClient.getInfo();
})();

getClient

Using getClient you can retrieve a global instance of BPClient within your app. This ensures that you are querying the same node as other plugins. The client returned will have all clients and methods available to the parent BPClient class.

import { getClient } from '@bpanel/bpanel-utils';

const client = getClient();

(async function() {
  if (!client.id)
    client.setClientInfo('test', 'handshake');

  // now you can start using your clients
  // anywhere else in the app that uses the client from `getClient`
  // will also be using the `test` clients until the info is changed again

  const info = await client.node.getInfo();

  console.log('info: ', info);
})();

bpanelClient and bwalletClient [deprecated]

NOTE: the client wrappers bpanelClient and bwalletClient have been deprecated in favor of getClient.

chain

Helper functions for working with the blockchain.

isSupported

chain.isChainSupported is a helper function that returns a boolean based on whether or not the input string is a supported chain. The supported chains can be inspected in chain.CHAINS


import { chain } from '@bpanel/bpanel-utils';

console.log(chain.isChainSupported('bitcoin'));
// true

console.log(chain.isChainSupported('monero'));
// false

console.log(chain.isChainSupported('bitcoincash'));
// true

console.log(chain.isChainSupported('handshake'));
// true

getBlock

Does a request to the node for the block information. Accepts one argument of either a block hash or height to query.

Returns a promise.

calcProgress

Based on a chain start time (time of the genesis block) and the current chain tip time, will calculate the progress of the blockchain sync.

Returns an integer.

getBlocksInRange

Return n number of blocks within a specified range. Accepts three arguments: start, end, and step.

if start is larger than end, it steps backwards, otherwise steps forward. Does synchronous calls to the node for each block so it won't return until all calls have returned.

Returns an array of blocks.

UXTX

User Experience Transaction

This is a convenience wrapper around the bcoin TX class that provides utilities for retrieving transaction information in a more user friendly way. It is particularly useful in building UIs to interact with transactions.

import { UXTX } from '@bpanel/bpanel-utils';
import { WalletClient } from 'bclient';

const walletClient = new WalletClient({
  network: 'main',
  port: 8334,
  apiKey: SECRETS.API_KEY,
});

const id = 'primary';
const wallet = walletClient.wallet(id);

/*
 * try fetching the hash yourself
 * curl -s https://blockchain.info/rawblock/0000000000000000000c76fd257881891a21a018c4abd13c33c9f06a822914c9 \
 *   | jq -r .tx[0].hash
 */

const hash = '6b3aafbed09f215d1f95fb06b7c204d12f7657e1bc1ff3dfa37d3248e05a430c';

const tx = await wallet.getTX(hash)

const options = {
  constants: { DATE_FORMAT: 'moment js date format string' },
  labels: {}, // see labels object for usable labels
  json: tx,
  wallet: id, // wallet name
};

const uxtx = UXTX.fromRaw(tx.tx, 'hex', options);

const json = uxtx.toJSON();

uxtx.toJSON will use the labels and transaction information to return human readable information about the transaction. It is particularly useful for calculating tabular data, for example, displaying if a specific transaction was incoming or outgoing. There are more ways that this class can be extended, for example detecting coinjoin transactions or sweep transactions.

TxManager

A wrapper around UXTX to manage many transactions.


import { TxManager, TxManagerOptions, UXTXOptions } from '@bpanel/bpanel-utils';

// set bitcoin as the current chain
UXTXOptions.chain = 'bitcoin';

// use default labels and constants in TxManagerOptions
(async () => {
  const txManager = TxManager.fromOptions(TxManagerOptions);

  const account = 'default';
  const txs = await wallet.getHistory(account);

  // generate list of UXTX.toJSON with default labels and constants
  const parsed = txManager.parse(txs, UXTXOptions);
})();

HD

This package includes helpers around HD tree derivation


import { COIN_TYPES, PURPOSE, HARDENED_FLAG } from '@bpanel/bpanel-utils';
import assert from 'bsert';

const bitcoin = COIN_TYPES['bitcoin']['main'];

assert(bitcoin === 0);

const bitcoincash = COIN_TYPES['bitcoincash']['main'];

assert(bitcoincash === 145);

assert(PURPOSE === 44);

assert(HARDENED_FLAG === 0x80000000);

helpers

now()

Returns the current UTC time in seconds.

isU8 and is16

Helper for checking and manipulating uints.


import { helpers } from '@bpanel/bpanel-utils';
import assert from 'bsert';

const twelve = 12;

assert(helpers.isU8(twelve));

const sixhundredtwelve = 612;

assert(helpers.is16(sixhundredtwelve));
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