Question about accessing Alto validator data via API/Inspector

[trevor-trinh]

Hi! I'm running the Alto example locally and have the validators running in a Docker container. I'm trying to pull data out of them (like the latest block) using the inspector package.

Looking at the inspector, it uses the default API URL and default identity. I can see the identity in the chain node YAML. From my understanding I'd need to change the API URL to some indexer server that the validators post to.

Are there any prebuilt API servers for this, or is the expectation that we build something that implements the same endpoints/logic as in the Client (seed/notarization/finalization/block)?

Just wanted to make sure I’m not missing an existing component before building the HTTP layer out, or is there another way to do this? Thanks for clarifying!

[patrick-ogrady]

Great question (actually pretty surprised no one has asked this before)!

Are there any prebuilt API servers for this?

In short, not yet.

When building Alto, we opted to build the publicly accessible infrastructure behind global.alto.exoware.xyz and/or usa.alto.exoware.xyz to expedite release. We'd love to add a memory-only simulator but haven't had the time.

Funny enough, one of the first things we built for the Alto successor we are actively working on was a simulator (and plan to release it with the rest of the code because it was so helpful for local development).

is the expectation that we build something that implements the same endpoints/logic as in the Client (seed/notarization/finalization/block)?

Other teams playing with Alto have opted to do this so far (as they're extending it quite a bit) but I do like the idea of providing some OOB option.

Just wanted to make sure I’m not missing an existing component before building the HTTP layer out, or is there another way to do this? Thanks for clarifying!

As we get closer to the launch of the Exoware API (the infrastructure we're co-designing with the Commonware Library), we plan to release a fully-featured simulator akin to AWS localstack and exclusively build on it for our examples. We provided a very early preview of what that API could look like and a generic simulator you could play with (https://github.com/exowarexyz/monorepo/tree/main/simulator) but we plan to iterate significantly on that in the coming months and expect the API to break.

[patrick-ogrady]

I haven't reviewed this in depth but took a stab at something based on what we're doing in the unreleased code I mentioned: commonwarexyz/alto#143

[trevor-trinh]

Gotcha, makes a lot of sense. And the simulator code is a great start thank you! Will use it as we're building it out.

[trevor-trinh]

You whipped that up quicker than quick haha

[patrick-ogrady]

I hope to merge it into main but won't have time to give it proper polish for a few days 👍

[trevor-trinh]

Plugged the simulator in and it works great!

Was wondering why it's called a simulator as opposed to indexer? Just curious since the behavior seems like an indexer and we configure it validator as an indexer.