Skip to main content

Development flow

This page is a definitive end-to-end guide into practical squid development. It uses templates to simplify the process. Check out Squid from scratch for a more educational barebones approach.

info

Feel free to also use the template-specific sqd scripts defined in commands.json to simplify your workflow. See sqd CLI cheatsheet for a short intro.

Prepare the environment​

  • Node v16.x or newer
  • Git
  • Squid CLI
  • Docker (if your squid will store its data to PostgreSQL)

See also the Environment set up page.

Understand your technical requirements​

Consider your business requirements and find out

  1. How the data should be delivered. Options:

  2. What data should be delivered

  3. What are the technologies powering the blockchain(s) in question. Supported options:

    Note that you can use SQD via RPC ingestion even if your network is not listed.

  4. What exact data should be retrieved from blockchain(s)

  5. Whether you need to mix in any off-chain data

Example requirements​

DEX analytics on Polygon

Suppose you want to train a prototype ML model on all trades done on Uniswap Polygon since the v3 upgrade.

  1. A delay of a few hours typically won't matter for training, so you may want to deliver the data as files for easier handling.
  2. The output could be a simple list of swaps, listing pair, direction and token amounts for each.
  3. Polygon is an EVM chain.
  4. All the required data is contained within Swap events emitted by the pair pool contracts. Uniswap deploys these dynamically, so you will also have to capture PoolCreated events from the factory contract to know which Swap events are coming from Uniswap and map them to pairs.
  5. No off-chain data will be necessary for this task.
NFT ownership on Ethereum

Suppose you want to make a website that shows the image and ownership history for ERC721 NFTs from a certain Ethereum contract.

  1. For this application it makes sense to deliver a GraphQL API.
  2. Output data might have Token, Owner and Transfer database tables / entities, with e.g. Token supplying all the fields necessary to show ownership history and the image.
  3. Ethereum is an EVM chain.
  4. Data on token mints and ownership history can be derived from Transfer(address,address,uint256) EVM event logs emitted by the contract. To render images, you will also need token metadata URLs that are only available by querying the contract state with the tokenURI(uint256) function.
  5. You'll need to retrieve the off-chain token metadata (usually from IPFS).
Kusama transfers BigQuery dataset

Suppose you want to create a BigQuery dataset with Kusama native tokens transfers.

  1. The delivery format is BigQuery.
  2. A single table with from, to and amount columns may suffice.
  3. Kusama is a Substrate chain.
  4. The required data is available from Transfer events emitted by the Balances pallet. Take a look at our Substrate data sourcing miniguide for more info on how to figure out which pallets, events and calls are necessary for your task.
  5. No off-chain data will be necessary for this task.

Start from a template​

Although it is possible to compose a squid from individual packages, in practice it is usually easier to start from a template.

Templates for the PostgreSQL+GraphQL data destination
  • A minimal template intended for developing EVM squids. Indexes ETH burns. 
    sqd init my-squid-name -t evm
  • A starter squid for indexing ERC20 transfers. 
    sqd init my-squid-name -t https://github.com/subsquid-labs/squid-erc20-template
  • Classic example Subgraph after a migration to SQD. 
    sqd init my-squid-name -t gravatar
  • A template showing how to combine data from multiple chains. Indexes USDC transfers on Ethereum and Binance. 
    sqd init my-squid-name -t multichain
Templates for storing data in files
  • USDC transfers -> local CSV 
    sqd init my-squid-name -t https://github.com/subsquid-labs/file-store-csv-example
  • USDC transfers -> local Parquet 
    sqd init my-squid-name -t https://github.com/subsquid-labs/file-store-parquet-example
  • USDC transfers -> CSV on S3 
    sqd init my-squid-name -t https://github.com/subsquid-labs/file-store-s3-example
Templates for the Google BigQuery data destination
  • USDC transfers -> BigQuery dataset 
    sqd init my-squid-name -t https://github.com/subsquid-labs/squid-bigquery-example

After retrieving the template of choice install its dependencies:

cd my-squid-name
npm i

Test the template locally. The procedure varies depending on the data sink:

  1. Launch a PostgreSQL container with

    docker compose up -d

  2. Build the squid with

    npm run build

  3. Apply the DB migrations with

    npx squid-typeorm-migration apply

  4. Start the squid processor with

    node -r dotenv/config lib/main.js

    You should see output that contains lines like these ones:

    04:11:24 INFO  sqd:processor processing blocks from 6000000
    04:11:24 INFO  sqd:processor using archive data source
    04:11:24 INFO  sqd:processor prometheus metrics are served at port 45829
    04:11:27 INFO  sqd:processor 6051219 / 18079056, rate: 16781 blocks/sec, mapping: 770 blocks/sec, 544 items/sec, eta: 12m

  5. Start the GraphQL server by running

    npx squid-graphql-server

    in a separate terminal, then visit the GraphiQL console to verify that the GraphQL API is up.

When done, shut down and erase your database with docker compose down.

The bottom-up development cycle​

The advantage of this approach is that the code remains buildable at all times, making it easier to catch issues early.

I. Regenerate the task-specific utilities​

Retrieve JSON ABIs for all contracts of interest (e.g. from Etherscan), taking care to get ABIs for implementation contracts and not proxies where appropriate. Assuming that you saved the ABI files to ./abi, you can then regenerate the utilities with

npx squid-evm-typegen ./src/abi ./abi/*.json --multicall

Or if you would like the tool to retrieve the ABI from Etherscan in your stead, you can run e.g.

npx squid-evm-typegen \
  src/abi \
  0xdAC17F958D2ee523a2206206994597C13D831ec7#usdt

The utility classes will become available at src/abi.

See also EVM typegen code generation.

II. Configure the data requests​

Data requests are customarily defined at src/processor.ts. The details depend on the network type:

Edit the definition of const processor to

  1. Use a data source appropriate for your chain and task.

  2. Request all event logs, transactions, execution traces and state diffs that your task requires, with any necessary related data (e.g. parent transactions for event logs).

  3. Select all data fields necessary for your task (e.g. gasUsed for transactions).

See reference documentation for more info and processor configuration showcase for a representative set of examples.

III. Decode and normalize the data​

Next, change the batch handler to decode and normalize your data.

In templates, the batch handler is defined at the processor.run() call in src/main.ts as an inline function. Its sole argument ctx contains:

  • at ctx.blocks: all the requested data for a batch of blocks
  • at ctx.store: the means to save the processed data
  • at ctx.log: a Logger
  • at ctx.isHead: a boolean indicating whether the batch is at the current chain head
  • at ctx._chain: the means to access RPC for state calls

This structure (reference) is common for all processors; the structure of ctx.blocks items varies.

Each item in ctx.blocks contains the data for the requested logs, transactions, traces and state diffs for a particular block, plus some info on the block itself. See EVM batch context reference.

Use the .decode methods from the contract ABI utilities to decode events and transactions, e.g.

import * as erc20abi from './abi/erc20'

processor.run(db, async ctx => {
  for (let block of ctx.blocks) {
    for (let log of block.logs) {
      if (log.topics[0]===erc20abi.events.Transfer.topic) {
        let {from, to, value} = erc20.events.Transfer.decode(log)
      }
    }
  }
})

See also the EVM data decoding.

(Optional) IV. Mix in external data and chain state calls output​

If you need external (i.e. non-blockchain) data in your transformation, take a look at the External APIs and IPFS page.

If any of the on-chain data you need is unavalable from the processor or incovenient to retrieve with it, you have an option to get it via direct chain queries.

V. Prepare the store​

At src/main.ts, change the Database object definition to accept your output data. The methods for saving data will be exposed by ctx.store within the batch handler.

  1. Define the schema of the database (and the core schema of the OpenReader GraphQL API if it is used) at schema.graphql.

  2. Regenerate the TypeORM model classes with

    npx squid-typeorm-codegen

    The classes will become available at src/model.

  3. Compile the models code with

    npm run build

  4. Ensure that the squid has access to a blank database. The easiest way to do so is to start PostgreSQL in a Docker container with

    docker compose up -d

    If the container is running, stop it and erase the database with

    docker compose down

    before issuing an docker compose up -d.

    The alternative is to connect to an external database. See this section to learn how to specify the connection parameters.

  5. Regenerate a migration with

    rm -r db/migrations
    npx squid-typeorm-migration generate

You can now use the async functions ctx.store.upsert() and ctx.store.insert(), as well as various TypeORM lookup methods to access the database.

See the typeorm-store guide and reference for more info.

VI. Persist the transformed data to your data sink​

Once your data is decoded, optionally enriched with external data and transformed the way you need it to be, it is time to save it.

For each batch, create all the instances of all TypeORM model classes at once, then save them with the minimal number of calls to upsert() or insert(), e.g.:

import { EntityA, EntityB } from './model'

processor.run(new TypeormDatabase(), async ctx => {
  const aEntities: Map<string, EntityA> = new Map() // id -> entity instance
  const bEntities: EntityB = []

  for (let block of ctx.blocks) {
    // fill the containets aEntities and bEntities
  }

  await ctx.store.upsert([...aEntities.values()])
  await ctx.store.insert(bEntities)
})

It will often make sense to keep the entity instances in maps rather than arrays to make it easier to reuse them when defining instances of other entities with relations to the previous ones. The process is described in more detail in the step 2 of the BAYC tutorial.

If you perform any database lookups, try to do so in batches and make sure that the entity fields that you're searching over are indexed.

See also the patterns and anti-pattens sections of the Batch processing guide.

The top-down development cycle​

The bottom-up development cycle described above is convenient for inital squid development and for trying out new things, but it has the disadvantage of not having the means of saving the data ready at hand when initially writing the data decoding/transformation code. That makes it necessary to come back to that code later, which is somewhat inconvenient e.g. when adding new squid features incrementally.

The alternative is to do the same steps in a different order:

  1. Update the store
  2. If necessary, regenerate the utility classes
  3. Update the processor configuration
  4. Decode and normalize the added data
  5. Retrieve any external data if necessary
  6. Add the persistence code for the transformed data

GraphQL options​

Store your data to PostgreSQL, then consult Serving GraphQL for options.

Scaling up​

If you're developing a large squid, make sure to use batch processing throughout your code.

A common mistake is to make handlers for individual event logs or transactions; for updates that require data retrieval that results in lots of small database lookups and ultimately in poor syncing performance. Collect all the relevant data and process it at once. A simple architecture of that type is discussed in the BAYC tutorial.

You should also check the Cloud best practices page even if you're not planning to deploy to SQD Cloud - it contains valuable performance-related tips.

Many issues commonly arising when developing larger squids are addressed by the third party @belopash/typeorm-store package. Consider using it.

For complete examples of complex squids take a look at the Giant Squid Explorer and Thena Squid repos.

Next steps​