The purpose of this Gridcoin HUG REST API repo is to provide an open-source high performance interface to the Gridcoin network through simple GET requests.
By following the readme, you can easily recreate the API in your own control. Do remember to change the API key and rpc details you've configured in the gridcoinresearch.conf file.
The contents of this entire repo should be considered MIT licenced.
It's difficult to debug development issues whilst running behind Gunicorn & NGINX, you're best running the HUG REST API directly with HUG during development "hug -f hug.py". Note that running HUG directly in this manner should only be performed during development, it is not suitable for exposing directly to the public as a production ready API.
Drastically simplify API development over multiple interfaces. With hug, design and develop your API once, then expose it however your clients need to consume it. Be it locally, over HTTP, or through the command line - hug is the fastest and most modern way to create APIs on Python3.
hug has been built from the ground up with performance in mind. It is built to consume resources only when necessary and is then compiled with Cython to achieve amazing performance. As a result, hug consistently benchmarks as one of the fastest Python frameworks and without question takes the crown as the fastest high-level framework for Python 3.
Source: Official website.
This is an install guide for Ubuntu 17.10. The HUG REST API uses Python3, HUG, Gunicorn & NGINX. If you change the OS or server components then the following guide will be less applicable, if you succeed please do provide a separate readme for alternative implementation solutions.
We create the 'grcapi' user, however you could rename this to whatever you want, just remember to change the NGINX & Gunicorn configuration files.
adduser grcapi
<ENTER NEW PASSWORD>
<CONFIRM NEW PASSWORD>
usermod -aG sudo grcapi
sudo usermod -a -G www-data grcapi
su - grcapi
sudo apt-get install libffi-dev libssl-dev python3-pip python3-dev build-essential git nginx python3-setuptools virtualenv libcurl4-openssl-dev
mkdir HUG
virtualenv -p python3 HUG
echo "source ./HUG/bin/activate" > access_env.sh
chmod +x access_env.sh
source access_env.sh
pip3 install --upgrade pip
pip3 install --upgrade setuptools
pip3 install --upgrade wheel
pip3 install requests
pip3 install hug
pip3 install gunicorn
pip3 install BeautifulSoup4
pip3 install numpy
pip3 install umsgpack
pip3 install gzip
pip3 install pendulum
pip3 install xmltodict
curl -OL https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases/download/v3.6.0/protoc-3.6.0-linux-x86_64.zip
unzip protoc-3.6.0-linux-x86_64.zip -d protoc3
sudo mv protoc3/bin/* /usr/local/bin/
sudo mv protoc3/include/* /usr/local/include/
sudo chown grcapi /usr/local/bin/protoc
sudo chown -R grcapi /usr/local/include/google
NGINX serves as a reverse web proxy to Gunicorn & uses an UNIX socket instead of an IP address for referencing Gunicorn.
Copy the nginx.conf file to /etc/nginx/
Reset nginx (sudo service nginx restart)
sudo mv default /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
You aught to implement a free LetsEncrypt SSL certificate, this requires a domain name (they don't sign IP addresses) and it needs to be renewed every few months by running certbot again. NOTE: Replace api.domain.tld with your own full domain path.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d api.domain.tld
Official website: http://gunicorn.org/
Documentation: http://docs.gunicorn.org/en/stable/
Gunicorn is used to provide scalable worker process management and task buffering for the HUG REST API. Gunicorn's documentation states that each CPU can provide roughly 2-3+ Gunicorn workers, however it may be able to achieve a higher quantity (worth testing).
cp gunicorn.service /etc/systemd/system/gunicorn.service
sudo systemctl start gunicorn
sudo systemctl enable gunicorn
If you make changes to the service or the hug script:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart gunicorn
If you want to monitor Gunicorn:
tail -f gunicorn_access_log
tail -f gunicorn_error_log
sudo systemctl status gunicorn
This section will detail the functionality which will be available to the public through GET requests.
The functions are currently all read-only functions, enabling the public to request data from the network without the risk of exposing critical wallet controls.
All GRC functions which don't require any input parameters can be called through this function.
beaconreport
currentneuralhash
currentneuralreport
getmininginfo
neuralreport
superblockage
upgradedbeaconreport
validcpids
getbestblockhash
getblockchaininfo
getblockcount
getconnectioncount
getdifficulty
getinfo
getnettotals
getnetworkinfo
getpeerinfo
getrawmempool
listallpolldetails
listallpolls
listpolldetails
listpolls
networktime
getwalletinfo
https://subdomain.domain.tld/grc_command?api_key=123abc&function=getinfo