RChat - RChain support to decentralize chat (Zulip)

Show case example how to make chat applications like Zulip decentralized with on-chain data.

Goal

1. Extract chat messages from Zulip and store it on-chain.
2. Read on-chain tables, keys and messages.
3. Import messages to Zulip.

Install nodejs dependencies

npm install

Run local Zulip server with RChain nodes

Control of the whole process is defined with npm scripts in package.json.

The first step is to start Zulip with its dependencies and RNode instances which will store on-chain data. Starting from fresh it will take a few minutes to complete. Check docker-compose logs and web access for more info.

TODO: Read-only RNode is defined in configuration but not currently used. Additional info should be provided how to read exported on-chain data.

npm run start-docker

To control docker-compose services which includes both docker-compose.yml and docker-compose-zulip.yml this npm script can be used.

# Get logs from all containers
npm run dc -- logs -f

# Get logs only from bootstrap RNode
npm run dc -- logs -f boot

Check when Zulip and RNode are started from the browser

Zulip: https://localhost:1443/.
RNode: http://localhost:40403/status.

Configure initial Zulip account (organization)

To login to a locally started Zulip instance it's necessary to follow the Zulip procedure and create an organization with an initial account.

This command will print a temporary link to access the initial Zulip configuration. Follow the link, create your account and login to Zulip server.

npm run zulip-gen-org-link

Configure smart contract to store chat messages

This step is necessary to execute only once when RChain nodes are started from a fresh state.

Creates a main contract with operations to insert DB data on-chain.

Result of these deploys will produce URI output which must be updated in .env file.

npm run iddb-deploy

After .env file is updated with IDDB_CONTRACT_URI execute command to create a contract for Zulip DB.

npm run myzulipdb-deploy

Update DB_CONTRACT_URI in .env file which is used as part of private channel for insert operations (chain_replica.mjs) and to get read-only channel for read operations (read-db.mjs).

NOTE: Whenever iddb-deploy and myzulipdb-deploy are deployed again the corresponding record in .env file must be updated.

Start JS script to process new messages from Zulip and import on-chain

npm start

Run JS script to import on-chain messages to new Zulip instance

When creating a new instance of Zulip, you can import on-chain messages by running these script. It will copy the data from obtained on-chain tables.

npm run fill-zulipdb

TODO: At the moment of this change, the function getTables (from on-chain) returns only zerver_message and zerver_usermessage tables, but there are a few more related to zerver_message such as zerver_userprofile. Copying those tables related to zerver_message could be an improvement to what it is done here.

Stop containers and clean data

Stop and remove all containers (data stored on disk will not be touched).

npm run dc -- down

Delete all data on disk. sudo is needed because RNode uses root user inside the container, so the mounted folder will be owned by root.

sudo rm -R data