Repo Description

This repo is mainly used to run a Quorum DLT network on Azure Blockchain as a Service (ABS) specifically and web services for 3 orgnizations in a Linux or Mac machine so as to set up a local development environment for developers. It can work with my DLT-Demo-Frontend-App repo together as a simple DLT demo.

Prerequisites

To run this repo, a user has to install the below tools on a local machine.

1. OS: MacOS 10.14.6 (properly tested) or Unix/Linux(not properly tested yet).
2. node version: 10.17.0.
3. A user has an Azure account and already set up a Quorum network with at least with one ABS member.
4. A ".env" file is required to be created inside the "quorum" folder as well as inside each party's folder in the "webapp" folder respectively. The contents of a .env file inside the "quorum" folder must have 3 key values pair as shown below:

PROVIDER=${ABS_TRANSACTION_NODE_ACCESS_KEYS_HTTPS_ENDPOINT}
PASSWORD=${ABS_TRANSACTION_NODE_SETUP_PASSWORD}
ADDRESS=${ABS_NODE_MEMBER_ACCOUNT}

The contents of a .env file inside each party folder must have 3 key values pair as shown below:

PORT={port number for a service}
PROVIDER=${ABS_TRANSACTION_NODE_ACCESS_KEYS_HTTPS_ENDPOINT}
PASSWORD=${ABS_TRANSACTION_NODE_SETUP_PASSWORD}
ADDRESS=${ABS_NODE_MEMBER_ACCOUNT}
APPINSIGHTS_INSTRUMENTATIONKEY={Azure app service instrumentation key} (only needed for a bank service)

Repo Structure

This section clarifies what are the purposes of folders and files used in this repo.

|__ quorum: This folder contains all the solidity smart contracts and the truffle deployment files.
    |__ config: This folder contains a config file that will read environment parameters from .env file.
    |__ contractAddresses: This folder contains txt files. Each will have a deployed smart contract address, which might be useful to a user when needed. The txt files are ignored by gitignore file, as the files are always generated on the fly, when the smart contracts are deployed to a Quorum network in the ABS.
    |__ contracts: This folder contains smart contract files.
    |__ migrations: This folder contains smart contract deploy files.
    |__ test: This folder will have files for unit tests.
    |__ .env: a .env file will be created by a user explicitly. This is stated as point 4 in the prerequsites, and the information will be sensitive, so it is ignored in the gitignore file.
|__ webapp: This folder contains all the files for each organisation to run as Web Services.
    |__ bank: a folder that contains all files related to a bank service.
        |__ .env: a .env file will be created by a user explicitly. This is stated as point 4 in the prerequsites, and the information will be sensitive, so it is ignored in the gitignore file.
    |__ buyer: a folder that contains all files related to a buyer service.
        |__ .env: a .env file will be created by a user explicitly. This is stated as point 4 in the prerequsites, and the information will be sensitive, so it is ignored in the gitignore file.
    |__ seller: a folder that contains all files related to a seller service.
        |__ .env: a .env file will be created by a user explicitly. This is stated as point 4 in the prerequsites, and the information will be sensitive, so it is ignored in the gitignore file.
|__ common.sh: This shell script defines the styling of information printed out. It is used by other shell script files.
|__ runAllStepsInOne.sh: This is a shell file that will run all other shell files named in a way like "stageX_{step description}.sh".
|__ stageX_{step description}.sh: These files are mainly used to automate the setup of a Fabric network in a local machine to quickly set up a local development environment. Details are given in a seperate section later.
|__ Dockerfile: a file to create docker images for all 3 parties.
|__ useLocalDockerImage.sh: a shell script file that will build docker images for all 3 parties by using the Dockerfile and auto run the 3 parties' backend apps as docker containers.

Shell files: StageX_{step description}

1. stage1_deploySmartContracts.sh is a shell file that will deploy the two Solidity smart contracts by using Truffle commands.
2. stage2_runWebServer.sh will run 3 web servers for 3 organisations respectively.

Run 3 Web Services as Docker Containers

Prerequesite Step: Run a script file called "runAllStepsInOne.sh", as it will create necessary folders to be used by docker containers.

./runAllStepsInOne.sh

1. Optoin 1: Run the following script to auto run this app by using a docker compose file. The docker compose file will pull pre-built docker images from the docker hub for all 3 parties.

./useRemoteDockerImages.sh

2. Option 2: Run another script file called "useLocalDockerImage.sh", it will build docker images locally and run docker containers based on the docker images for all 3 parties.

./useLocalDockerImages.sh

Web Servers

A folder called webapp in this repo works as a template of a web server for each org. Basically, each org will have its own web server that will receive HTTP requests from a frontend first, then the web server will access its own org's blockchain/DLT ledger(i.e. the Fabric peer node for each org) to either query or update data on the ledger and send HTTP responses to the frontend.

Note: Practically, running a web server is isloated from a blockchain environment, but make the right REST apis calls to the web server from a frontend does require that the blockchain environment is already setup successfully.

Web Server Port Numbers (Regardless of whether they run as purely NodeJS web servers or Docker Containers)

Orgnaization	Port
Bank	3001
Buyer	3002
Seller	3003

Testing

To test if a Fabric Blockchain network as well as Web Servers are up and running, one can type in the below API for Bank in a browser or a tool like Postman for testing.

http://localhost:3001/sellerBalance
http://localhost:3001/buyererBalance
http://localhost:3002/balance
http://localhost:3003/balance