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Retrieve Messages Using Waku Store With ReactJS

It is easy to use DappConnect with ReactJS. In this guide, we will demonstrate how your ReactJS dApp can use Waku Store to retrieve messages.

DApps running on a phone or in a browser are often offline: The browser could be closed or mobile app in the background.

Waku Relay is a gossip protocol. As a user, it means that your peers forward you messages they just received. If you cannot be reached by your peers, then messages are not relayed; relay peers do not save messages for later.

However, Waku Store peers do save messages they relay, allowing you to retrieve them at a later time. The Waku Store protocol is best-effort and does not guarantee data availability. Waku Relay should still be preferred when online; Waku Store can be used after resuming connectivity: For example, when the dApp starts.

In this guide, we'll review how you can use Waku Store to retrieve messages.

Before starting, you need to choose a Content Topic for your dApp. Check out the how to choose a content topic guide to learn more about content topics.

Setup

Create a new React app:

npx create-react-app my-app
cd my-app

Then, install js-waku:

npm install js-waku

Start the dev server and open the dApp in your browser:

npm run start

Note: We have noticed some issues with React bundling due to npm pulling an old version of babel. If you are getting an error about the optional chaining (?.) character not being valid, try cleaning up and re-installing your dependencies:

rm -rf node_modules package-lock.json
npm install

Create Waku Instance

In order to interact with the Waku network, you first need a Waku instance. Go to App.js and modify the App function:

import { Waku } from 'js-waku';
import * as React from 'react';

function App() {
  const [waku, setWaku] = React.useState(undefined);
  const [wakuStatus, setWakuStatus] = React.useState('None');

  // Start Waku
  React.useEffect(() => {
    // If Waku status not None, it means we are already starting Waku 
    if (wakuStatus !== 'None') return;

    setWakuStatus('Starting');

    // Create Waku
    Waku.create({ bootstrap: true }).then((waku) => {
      // Once done, put it in the state
      setWaku(waku);
      // And update the status
      setWakuStatus('Connecting');
    });
  }, [waku, wakuStatus]);

  return (
    <div className='App'>
      <header className='App-header'>
        // Display the status on the web page
        <p>{wakuStatus}</p>
      </header>
    </div>
  );
}

Wait to be connected

When using the bootstrap option, it may take some time to connect to other peers. To ensure that you have store peers available to retrieve messages from, use the Waku.waitForConnectedPeer() async function:

React.useEffect(() => {
  if (!waku) return;

  if (wakuStatus === 'Connected') return;

  waku.waitForConnectedPeer().then(() => {
    setWakuStatus('Connected');
  });
}, [waku, wakuStatus]);

Use Protobuf

Waku v2 protocols use protobuf by default.

Let's review how you can use protobuf to decode structured data.

First, define a data structure. For this guide, we will use a simple chat message that contains a timestamp, nick and text:

{
  timestamp: Date;
  nick: string;
  text: string;
}

To encode and decode protobuf payloads, you can use the protons package.

Install Protobuf Library

npm install protons

Protobuf Definition

Define the data structure with protons:

import protons from 'protons';

const proto = protons(`
message ChatMessage {
  uint64 timestamp = 1;
  string nick = 2;
  bytes text = 3;
}
`);

You can learn about protobuf message definitions here: Protocol Buffers Language Guide.

Decode Messages

To decode the messages retrieved from a Waku Store node, you need to extract the protobuf payload and decode it using protons.

function decodeMessage(wakuMessage) {
  if (!wakuMessage.payload) return;

  const { timestamp, nick, text } = proto.ChatMessage.decode(
    wakuMessage.payload
  );

  // All fields in protobuf are optional so be sure to check
  if (!timestamp || !text || !nick) return;

  const time = new Date();
  time.setTime(timestamp);

  const utf8Text = Buffer.from(text).toString('utf-8');

  return { text: utf8Text, timestamp: time, nick };
}

Retrieve messages

You now have all the building blocks to retrieve and decode messages for a store node.

Note that Waku Store queries are paginated. The API provided by js-waku automatically traverses all pages of the Waku Store response. By default, the most recent page is retrieved first but this can be changed with the pageDirection option.

First, define a React state to save the messages:

function App() {
  const [messages, setMessages] = React.useState([]);
  /// [..]
}

Then, define processMessages to decode and then store messages in a React state. You will pass processMessages as a callback option to WakuStore.queryHistory. processMessages will be called each time a page is received from the Waku Store.

const processMessages = (retrievedMessages) => {
  const messages = retrievedMessages.map(decodeMessage).filter(Boolean);

  setMessages((currentMessages) => {
    return currentMessages.concat(messages.reverse());
  });
};

Finally, pass processMessage in WakuStore.queryHistory as the callback value:

waku.store
  .queryHistory([ContentTopic], { callback: processMessages });

All together, you should now have:

const ContentTopic = '/toy-chat/2/huilong/proto';

function App() {
  // [..]
  // Store messages in the state
  const [messages, setMessages] = React.useState([]);

  React.useEffect(() => {
    if (wakuStatus !== 'Connected') return;

    const processMessages = (retrievedMessages) => {
      const messages = retrievedMessages.map(decodeMessage).filter(Boolean);

      setMessages((currentMessages) => {
        return currentMessages.concat(messages.reverse());
      });
    };

    waku.store
      .queryHistory([ContentTopic], { callback: processMessages })
      .catch((e) => {
        console.log('Failed to retrieve messages', e);
      });
  }, [waku, wakuStatus]);

  return (
    <div className='App'>
      <header className='App-header'>
        <h2>{wakuStatus}</h2>
        <h3>Messages</h3>
        <ul>
          <Messages messages={messages} />
        </ul>
      </header>
    </div>
  );
}

Note that WakuStore.queryHistory select an available store node for you. However, it can only select a connected node, which is why the bootstrapping is necessary. It will throw an error if no store node is available.

You can see the complete code in the Minimal ReactJS Waku Store App.

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