paritytech / paritytech/try-runtime-cli

Expose RPC endpoint

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enhancement good first issue
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
25
Forks
29
PR merge metrics
No merged PRs in 30d

Description

Original issue https://github.com/paritytech/substrate/issues/13563

When we do follow-chain, it would be useful to have the basic RPCs implemented and exposed on a specific port, so that you can connect PJS Apps to your fake chain.

An alternative for this is to actually integrate this in the node. https://github.com/paritytech/substrate/pull/12537 envisioned that you would be able to run a node that is normally syncing, but instead of calling Core_execute_block, it would call into TryRuntime_execute_block. This would give us a fully working client.


Relevant comment: https://github.com/paritytech/substrate/issues/13563#issuecomment-1498622775

the scenario that he is interested in is:

You run execute-block or fast-forward, and once the block have all executed, you want to inspect the state.

one way to approach this is to make try-runtime cli programmable, so you can define more tests to be written, but this is a holy PITA in Rust.

an easier way, which Alan from Moonbeam is also asking is, to make the try-runtime cli capable of implementing a few important RPCs like state_getStorage and so on, and then we query it with Polkadot JS api/apps.

in principle, I think this is not hard, but I have no idea how hard it is.

So, imagine the try-runtime CLI being able to return a value to a subset of the RPC requests, namely all of the ones that can be answered by having a state.

because end of the day, try-runtime-cli is just a wrapper for remote-externalities, which is a "test state".

the problem though is that the underlying remote-ext can have a partial state etc. So there are a lot of edge cases that we may not be able to handle, and developers might confuse themselves.

For example, you would run:

try-runtime fast-forward 1000 --rpc and this will run 1000 empty blocks for you, and the process is still running, hosting an RPC server.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

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

Read the try-runtime CLI flow for execute-block and fast-forward, then inspect how remote-externalities provides test state. Define the supported state-backed RPC subset, including state_getStorage, and verify that try-runtime fast-forward 1000 --rpc keeps an RPC server running after execution so Polkadot JS can inspect the resulting state.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
api, blockchain, cli
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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