services.md

About Ocean off-chain services

Introduction

Ocean uses these off-chain services:

• Ocean Provider is for data services. Specifically, it's a REST API serving requests for two types of data services: static urls (for downloading data) and compute services. It's run by the marketplace or the data publisher.
• Ocean Aquarius is metadata cache REST API. This helps to aid search in marketplaces.

We now describe how to use these.

1. Set config values for services

Here we use a file to set config values.

In your working directory, create a file config.ini and fill it with the following. It will use pre-existing services running for rinkeby testnet.

[eth-network]
network = https://rinkeby.infura.io/v3/<your Infura project id>

[resources]
metadata_cache_uri = https://aquarius.oceanprotocol.com
provider.url = https://provider.rinkeby.oceanprotocol.com

Ensure that envvars don't override the config file values:

unset OCEAN_NETWORK_URL METADATA_CACHE_URI AQUARIUS_URL PROVIDER_URL

Create an envvar to point to the new config file. In the console:

export OCEAN_CONFIG_FILE=config.ini

2. Use the services within Python

In Python, import and configure the components / services:

import os
from ocean_lib.config import Config

#configure the components
config = Config(os.getenv('OCEAN_CONFIG_FILE'))

Now you're ready to use the services! 🐳 The marketplace tutorial will use them in more detail.

Alternatives on Services

Above, we described a specific flow to go through configuring services. Here are some variants of that flow.

Point to services in other networks

The service urls above are for rinkeby. Ocean's docs have urls for Ethereum mainnet and other supported networks.

Run your own services, separately

Above, we pointed to existing services. Alternatively, you can run your own. Here's how.

Open a new console, and get provider running:

docker run oceanprotocol/provider:latest

Open another new console, and get aquarius running:

docker run oceanprotocol/aquarius:latest

Here are the urls for the local services, for use in config.ini etc.

• Provider url: http://127.0.0.1:8030
• Aquarius url: http://127.0.0.1:5000

Run your own services, all at once

Above, we ran all services separately. You can also run Ocean Barge to conveniently run them all at once.