Custom protocol in libp2p

In the previous tutorial, we've looked at how to create a simple ping program using the nim-libp2p.

We'll now look at how to create a custom protocol inside the libp2p

Let's create a part2.nim, and import our dependencies:

import chronos
import stew/byteutils

import libp2p

This is similar to the first tutorial, except we don't need to import the Ping protocol.

Next, we'll declare our custom protocol

const TestCodec = "/test/proto/1.0.0"

type TestProto = ref object of LPProtocol

We've set a protocol ID, and created a custom LPProtocol. In a more complex protocol, we could use this structure to store interesting variables.

A protocol generally has two part: and handling/server part, and a dialing/client part. Theses two parts can be identical, but in our trivial protocol, the server will wait for a message from the client, and the client will send a message, so we have to handle the two cases separately.

Let's start with the server part:

proc new(T: typedesc[TestProto]): T =
  # every incoming connections will in be handled in this closure
  proc handle(conn: Connection, proto: string) {.async, gcsafe.} =
    # Read up to 1024 bytes from this connection, and transform them into
    # a string
    echo "Got from remote - ", string.fromBytes(await conn.readLp(1024))
    # We must close the connections ourselves when we're done with it
    await conn.close()

  return T.new(codecs = @[TestCodec], handler = handle)

This is a constructor for our TestProto, that will specify our codecs and a handler, which will be called for each incoming peer asking for this protocol. In our handle, we simply read a message from the connection and echo it.

We can now create our client part:

proc hello(p: TestProto, conn: Connection) {.async.} =
  await conn.writeLp("Hello p2p!")

Again, pretty straight-forward, we just send a message on the connection.

We can now create our main procedure:

proc main() {.async, gcsafe.} =
  let
    rng = newRng()
    testProto = TestProto.new()
    switch1 = newStandardSwitch(rng=rng)
    switch2 = newStandardSwitch(rng=rng)

  switch1.mount(testProto)

  await switch1.start()
  await switch2.start()

  let conn = await switch2.dial(switch1.peerInfo.peerId, switch1.peerInfo.addrs, TestCodec)

  await testProto.hello(conn)

  # We must close the connection ourselves when we're done with it
  await conn.close()

  await allFutures(switch1.stop(), switch2.stop()) # close connections and shutdown all transports

This is very similar to the first tutorial's main, the only noteworthy difference is that we use newStandardSwitch, which is similar to the createSwitch of the first tutorial, but is bundled directly in libp2p

We can now wrap our program by calling our main proc:

waitFor(main())

And that's it! In the next tutorial, we'll create a more complex protocol using Protobuf.