Clear up mechanism for CRUD operations on videos about paratii-js

[ya7ya]

hey @bent0b0x , this is pretty weird since this code has nothing to do with ipfs 😏 . I'll investigate deeper. Thanks for the heads up.

[jellegerbrandy]

Yeah, sorry about the lack of documentation, I'll try to update it. Work in progress. Also there are many things that are simply not working yet. Here's some pointers:

• Need ethereum address for fetching data of video: if it's true, it is a bug.

• There should be no need in the client code to instantiate ParatiiEth directly. The way to use it would be to have one single paratii = new Paratii(..) instance in the app, and access the paratiiEth instance as the eth attribute on your object, i.e. as paratii.eth

• The situation is complex, and the API and docs should hide this complexitity but does not do so very well yet. But the pattern for getting information about a video once you have the videoId would be:

  let paratii = new Paratii({provider: ...})
  paratii.core.videos.get(videoId)

Actually, I am thinking of removing this core invocation as well, so it can just become: paratii.videos.get().

• To give you an idea of the inner workings:
  paratii.eth.videos.get(videoId) : query the blockcahin for information about the video. (this info is partial, because some info is stored in ipfs)
  paratii.db.videos.get(videoId) (not working yet): get video info from the database index, a service that we provide, that makes the info we have stored about videos on the blockahin and in ipfs indexed and searchable
  paratii.core.videos.get(videoId): get info about hte video, you don't care where it comes from. At the moment, this will get data from blockahin and ipfs, in a next iteration it should just call paratii.db.videos.get.

[bent0b0x]

I will change the title of this issue because I think you do not, in fact, need an eth address to fetch data about a video. However, I cannot get it working still (I am running testrpc locally)

Right now I am using code like this:

const paratii = new Paratii({
  provider: "http://localhost:8545"
});

paratii.core.vids
  .create({
    id: "0x90f8bf6a479",
    owner: "0x90f8bf6a479f320ead074411a4b0e7944ea8c9c1"
  })
  .then(() => {
    paratii.core.vids
      .get("0x90f8bf6a479")
      .then(res => {
        console.log(res);
      })
      .catch(e => {
        console.log("e: ", e);
      });
  });

which results in an error:

Also to note, if I try to include a property of ipfsHash in the create() call, I get this error:

[jellegerbrandy]

@bent0b0x: ok, probably a bug. The fact that you cannot pass ain ipfsHash explicitly is correct. Can you push a branch with this bug, so we save time on trying to reproduce?

@ya7ya : The calls from core may touch on the ipfs code - the idea is that parati.eth does the blockcahin stuff, paratii.ipfs the ipfs things, paratii.db the database stuff, and paratii.core (which is what ben is using here) ties everything together and can (and does) call ipfs under the hood.

[ya7ya]

@bent0b0x @jellegerbrandy I figured out the problem, the this.config in getIPFSInstance changes based on the scope of the function that calls it. so Cannot read property 'closed' of null is because the repo was null. i'm gonna push the fixes now to the ipfs branch

[jellegerbrandy]

In any case, @bent0b0x , here is the corresponding test (which works and seems verys imilar to your code) for reference: https://github.com/Paratii-Video/paratii-lib/blob/master/test/paratii.core.vids.js#L19

[ya7ya]

Error fixed in this commit f84578d

@bent0b0x Let me know if you're still having issues with this.

[bent0b0x]

Thanks @ya7ya, that cleared up that issue! However, now I see this:

[ya7ya]

@bent0b0x oh, i see, I'll push a fix now 👍

[bent0b0x]

If you check out the branch 16-player you can test this out, load up localhost:8080 and the app will try to run the lib code (via VideoActions.js).

Of course you'll need to yarn link to paratii-lib

[ya7ya]

@bent0b0x fixed in 7778f67

Let me know if something else pops up 😄 👍

[bent0b0x]

@ya7ya

It looks like calling paratii core indirectly calls paratii eth, which leads to problem given how I'm instantiating Paratii. Thoughts?

[ya7ya]

cc @jellegerbrandy ☝️

@bent0b0x you sure testrpc is up and running ? we probably need to deploy a test registry i think

[bent0b0x]

Yes it is running

[bent0b0x]

@jellegerbrandy I tried your suggestion of calling paratii.eth.deployContracts(), but I get the following error:

This is how Paratii was inited:

const paratii = new Paratii({
  provider: 'http://localhost:8545'
})

[jellegerbrandy]

Yes.
So you need an ethereofum account to write stuff to the blockchain (such as deploying contracts). That means you need to provide an address as well as a way of signing messages with that address (either a private key or a wallet loaded from localStorage):

This can be either specified on start up

   Paratii({ address: 0x12345, privateKey: 'xxxx })

Or with the setAccount function indicated in the error message:

   paratii.setAccount({ address: '0x2332', privateKey: 'dsfaskfd'})

Where to get that key? It needs to be of an account that has some ether available to pay for the transactions. We are now setting this up #31, should be done today, and then we use the same config for testig in the portal.

[bent0b0x]

@jellegerbrandy the private key for this test account, is this something we don't mind publishing in our code? And either way this will need to run in the browser so it will be discoverable, yes?

I'm still unclear on what we are doing for production. What does this address represent? Is it paratii's address so that we can communicate w/ the blockchain for the user? Because users will not be required to have an account to read info about a video, for example.

[bent0b0x]

Okay, I think I am very close to having this working (at least for a POC) in the portal. I am able to instantiate paratii-lib, deploy the contracts, and then create a video like so:

lib.core.vids
      .create({
        id,
        price: 0,
        owner: '0xa99dBd162ad5E1601E8d8B20703e5A3bA5c00Be7'
      })

Then I can fetch it with a .get().

Now, I would like to test actually .get()-ing a video that is streamable via ipfs (because in the example above I am creating a dummy video). My first thought was to take the ipfsHash from a video that we are already using in paratii player and add that in to my .create() call, but I get errors saying that ipfsHash is not an allowed property.

Anyways, I feel like I might be going down the wrong route anyway. Thoughts on how to do this?

[jellegerbrandy]

This is exactly the way it is supposed to be used.

The core.vids.create() does not take the ipfsHash, because I thought that the typical case would be that it would take a 'file' argument and create the hash itself. I created an issue on the paratii-lib repo to add this: #39

[bent0b0x]

@jellegerbrandy I think passing in file does, indeed, make the most sense. I was trying to pass in ipfsHash for testing purposes, so I'm not sure that #39 will be necessary. Do we anticipate file being of type File?

[jellegerbrandy]

here some more responses to your questions, @bent0b0x

• The address (and private key) used when initializating Paratii represent the users's ethereum address
• Each client instance always has an associated ethereum address. Even when we do what we called "anonymous navigation" - if we do not know which user we have (i.e. there is no cookie), we simply generate a new address.
• We don't mind publishing the test private key, because it is an account used for testing purposes only. It is just "some" account.
• About the ipfshash arg: I think it is still useful in any case to be able to set the hash directory. (Typically, this will be the hash of the transcoded files - i.e. it may take a long time to go from file to ipfshash, because we need to do all the transcoding). So I'll leave #39 open.
• The "file" argument should probably be of type "filestream". #44
• And it is not yet working (core.vids.create() ignored the file argument: #46)

[bent0b0x]

Thanks! I have a couple of questions remaining:

• Regarding list item 2: what part of our stack is taking care of this? Will we have to replicate this functionality (that I'm assuming existed) in paratii-video and port it to paratii-portal? And then store this data in paratii-portal's application state?
• Regarding list item 3: If our tests are reliant on this test account having some amount of ETH/PTI, is there an api in paratii-lib to set the amount of ETH/PTI associated w/ an account? Otherwise we will end up coding tests w/o knowing the exact balance of our account

[jellegerbrandy]

Regarding your first question: who/what is taking care of each client already having an ethereum address. So, yes, in paratii-player it was already working like that, the tests are here: https://github.com/Paratii-Video/paratii-portal/blob/dev/test/functional-tests/profile.spec.js

In paratii-lib, this stuff is handled by various functions in paratii.eth.wallet that are used for createing and serializing account info; the paratii-portal code will have to glue this together and call the right things at the right moment: how that should be done is encoded in the profile.spec.js. (more or less, that is)

Regarding the question: how is the test account gonna get some PTI and ETH to work with? I think we can use the same mechanism as in paratii-lib (where we are also setting up a test account and giving it some money). @geckoslair coded that, I have not looked into the details.

[jellegerbrandy]

closing this as I do not see anything actionable anymore... feel free to reopen of create a new issues if things were left unresolved