Validator Auction Backend

Backend server to retrieve all needed information about the running auction. The information is currently retrieved from the elastic cluster of eth.events by filtering the events emitted that have the address of the validator auction contract.

Configuration

There are some environment variables to configure the retrieval of the events:

VALIDATOR_ADDRESS=0x06012c8cf97BEaD5deAe237070F9587f8E7A266d

Set here the address of the deployed validator auction contract. The server will then look for events that have the configured address set.

Note: The contract address is set to the CryptoKitty as an example.

VALIDATOR_NETWORK=ethereum/ethereum/mainnet

The configured string will be used as an URL-part in the REST calls against the eth.events cluster. The format of the string is $technology/$blockchain/$network. Examples of other possible network combinations are listed here: https://account.eth.events/status.

ETH_EVENTS_URL=https://api.eth.events

If the variable is not set, random example data is returned.

ETH_EVENTS_TOKEN=1d59aa2e-2036-46fd-b54e-f568db07dea1

The eth.events access token used to send the requests.

Note: The token listed above is just an example and won't work.

VALIDATOR_AUCTION_START_TIMESTAMP=1561107511

The planned auction start in epoch seconds. If it is not set the current block-time will be used. This start date is only used in case the auction hasn't started yet.

It is possible to define a .env file in the root directory of the project. It gets automatically loaded on start and read in the configured values. An example file with the values of the above sections would look like that:

VALIDATOR_NETWORK="ethereum/ethereum/mainnet"
VALIDATOR_ADDRESS="0x06012c8cf97bead5deae237070f9587f8e7a266d"
ETH_EVENTS_URL="Https://api.eth.events"  # only for production mode
ETH_EVENTS_TOKEN="717b928b-94bc-4e2b-bdbf-96bf2f8981c7"  # only for production mode

Usage Without Docker

The application can run in a NodeJS environment. At least version v8.15.0 is required. The script targets to start it will automatically load an environment file as suggested above.

$ npm install
# production mode:
$ npm run start
# development mode (more verbose logging):
$ npm run dev

Usage With Docker

First build the Docker image from the sources:

$ docker build --tag validator-backend .

Start a Docker container with the built image. Map the inner port 8090 to any external port depending on your needs. The container will also read the application its configuration from the environment file as suggested above.

$ docker run \
    --publish 8090:8090 \
    --volume $(pwd)/logs/:/logs \
    --env-file .env \
    validator-backend

Logging

Access-Logs will be put into the ./logs directory. This gets created automatically if it does not already exist.

Frontend

The implementation for the visual representation can be found in the Trustlines Foundation Website.

Stopping the backend

Once the auction is over, the backend for the auction website should be stopped. Before that, a static auction summary should be fetched and included in the frontend in replacement of the backend call. An example commit of this is baa5cf5.