paritytech / paritytech/polkadot-cli

feat: add --watch flag to stream live storage changes

Open
#76 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

enhancement
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
10
Forks
2
Avg merge
12h 35m
Merged PRs (30d)
4

Description

Problem

Users monitoring on-chain state must repeatedly re-run queries manually. There's no way to subscribe to live storage changes from the CLI.

Related

  • #69 (watch command)

Proposed Solution

Add a --watch flag to the query command that streams storage updates in real-time.

Implementation

polkadot-api provides watchValue() and watchEntries() Observables that emit on every storage change for the subscribed key.

if (options.watch) {
  const observable = storage.watchValue(...keys)
  observable.subscribe({
    next: (value) => printResult(value, options),
    error: (err) => { console.error(err); process.exit(1) },
  })
  // Keep process alive until SIGINT
} else {
  const value = await storage.getValue(...keys)
  printResult(value, options)
}
Behavior
  • Each update emits a new result via printResult
  • Graceful SIGINT (Ctrl+C) handling to cleanly unsubscribe and disconnect
  • Pairs naturally with --output ndjson (see #64) — one JSON line per update
  • Pretty output shows a timestamp separator between updates

Priority

MEDIUM

Files

  • src/commands/query.ts

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start in src/commands/query.ts and trace the existing query path, including printResult and storage.getValue. Add the --watch path using the described storage observable, then verify that updates are emitted, SIGINT unsubscribes and disconnects cleanly, and ndjson output remains one line per update.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
typescript
Domain
cli
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
62/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.