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Indexing Transactions

Tendermint allows you to index transactions and blocks and later query or subscribe to their results. Transactions are indexed by TxResult.Events and blocks are indexed by Response(Begin|End)Block.Events. However, transactions are also indexed by a primary key which includes the transaction hash and maps to and stores the corresponding TxResult. Blocks are indexed by a primary key which includes the block height and maps to and stores the block height, i.e. the block itself is never stored.

Each event contains a type and a list of attributes, which are key-value pairs denoting something about what happened during the method's execution. For more details on Events, see the ABCI documentation.

An Event has a composite key associated with it. A compositeKey is constructed by its type and key separated by a dot.

For example:

"jack": [
  "account.number": 100
]

would be equal to the composite key of jack.account.number.

By default, Tendermint will index all transactions by their respective hashes and height and blocks by their height.

Configuration

Operators can configure indexing via the [tx_index] section. The indexer field takes a series of supported indexers. If null is included, indexing will be turned off regardless of other values provided.

[tx-index]

# The backend database list to back the indexer.
# If list contains null, meaning no indexer service will be used.
#
# The application will set which txs to index. In some cases a node operator will be able
# to decide which txs to index based on configuration set in the application.
#
# Options:
#   1) "null"
#   2) "kv" (default) - the simplest possible indexer, backed by key-value storage (defaults to levelDB; see DBBackend).
#     - When "kv" is chosen "tx.height" and "tx.hash" will always be indexed.
#   3) "psql" - the indexer services backed by PostgreSQL.
# indexer = []

Supported Indexers

KV

The kv indexer type is an embedded key-value store supported by the main underlying Tendermint database. Using the kv indexer type allows you to query for block and transaction events directly against Tendermint's RPC. However, the query syntax is limited and so this indexer type might be deprecated or removed entirely in the future.

PostgreSQL

The psql indexer type allows an operator to enable block and transaction event indexing by proxying it to an external PostgreSQL instance allowing for the events to be stored in relational models. Since the events are stored in a RDBMS, operators can leverage SQL to perform a series of rich and complex queries that are not supported by the kv indexer type. Since operators can leverage SQL directly, searching is not enabled for the psql indexer type via Tendermint's RPC -- any such query will fail.

Note, the SQL schema is stored in state/indexer/sink/psql/schema.sql and operators must explicitly create the relations prior to starting Tendermint and enabling the psql indexer type.

Example:

$ psql ... -f state/indexer/sink/psql/schema.sql

Default Indexes

The Tendermint tx and block event indexer indexes a few select reserved events by default.

Transactions

The following indexes are indexed by default:

  • tx.height
  • tx.hash

Blocks

The following indexes are indexed by default:

  • block.height

Adding Events

Applications are free to define which events to index. Tendermint does not expose functionality to define which events to index and which to ignore. In your application's DeliverTx method, add the Events field with pairs of UTF-8 encoded strings (e.g. "transfer.sender": "Bob", "transfer.recipient": "Alice", "transfer.balance": "100").

Example:

func (app *KVStoreApplication) DeliverTx(req types.RequestDeliverTx) types.Result {
    //...
    events := []abci.Event{
        {
            Type: "transfer",
            Attributes: []abci.EventAttribute{
                {Key: []byte("sender"), Value: []byte("Bob"), Index: true},
                {Key: []byte("recipient"), Value: []byte("Alice"), Index: true},
                {Key: []byte("balance"), Value: []byte("100"), Index: true},
                {Key: []byte("note"), Value: []byte("nothing"), Index: true},
            },
        },
    }
    return types.ResponseDeliverTx{Code: code.CodeTypeOK, Events: events}
}

If the indexer is not null, the transaction will be indexed. Each event is indexed using a composite key in the form of {eventType}.{eventAttribute}={eventValue}, e.g. transfer.sender=bob.

Querying Transactions Events

You can query for a paginated set of transaction by their events by calling the /tx_search RPC endpoint:

curl "localhost:26657/tx_search?query=\"message.sender='cosmos1...'\"&prove=true"

Check out API docs for more information on query syntax and other options.

Subscribing to Transactions

Clients can subscribe to transactions with the given tags via WebSocket by providing a query to /subscribe RPC endpoint.

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "method": "subscribe",
  "id": "0",
  "params": {
    "query": "message.sender='cosmos1...'"
  }
}

Check out API docs for more information on query syntax and other options.

Querying Blocks Events

You can query for a paginated set of blocks by their events by calling the /block_search RPC endpoint:

curl "localhost:26657/block_search?query=\"block.height > 10 AND val_set.num_changed > 0\""

Check out API docs for more information on query syntax and other options.