casper-node-macros

The casper-node-macros crate offers an easy-to-use macro to create reactor implementations for the component system. It enforces a set of convention and allows generating a large amount of otherwise boilerplate heavy setup code comfortably.

The macro is invoked by calling the cosy_macro::reactor macro as follows:

reactor!(NameOfReactor {
    type Config = ConfigurationType;

    components: {
        component_a = CompA<TypeArg>(constructor_arg_1, constructor_arg_2, ...);
        component_b = @CompB(constructor_arg1, ..);
        // ...
    }

    events: {
        component_a = Event<TypeArg>;
    }

    requests: {
        StorageRequest -> component_a;
        NetworkRequest -> component_b;
        ThirdRequest -> component_a;
        AnotherRequest -> !;
    }

    announcements: {
        NetworkAnnouncement -> [component_a, component_b];
        StorageAnnouncement -> [];
    }
});

The sections in detail:

Outer definition

The definition of

reactor!(NameOfReactor {
    type Config = ConfigurationType;
    // ...
});

indicates that

the newly created reactor will be named NameOfReactor and
its configuration type will be ConfigurationType.

The types NameOfReactorEvent and NameOfReactorError will be automatically generated as well.

Component definition

Components are defined in the first section:

    components: {
        component_a = CompA<TypeArg>(constructor_arg_1, constructor_arg_2, ...);
        component_b = @CompB(constructor_arg1, ..);
        // ...
    }

Here

two components will be defined as fields on the reactor struct, the fields being named component_a and component_b respectively,
their type will be crate::components::comp_a::CompA (automatically deduced from the name),
they will be constructed passing in constructor_arg_1, constructor_arg_2 to the first and constructor_arg1 to the second component,
CompA::new will return just the component, while CompB::new will return a tuple of (component, effects), indicated by the @ prefix,
two variants NameOfReactorEvent::ComponentA and NameOfReactorEvent::ComponentB will be added to the reactors event type,
these events will wrap crate::components::comp_a::Event (see caveat below) and crate::components::comp_b::Event respectively,
a From<crate::components::comp_a::Event> impl will be generated for NameOfReactorEvent (similarly for comp_b),
the appropriate variants will similarly be added to the NameOfReactorError enum,
and all variants of NameOfReactorEvent that wrap a component event will be forwarded to that component's handle_event function.

Note that during construction, the parameters cfg, registry, event_queue and rng are available, as well as the local variable effect_builder.

Event overrides

Ideally all NameOfReactorEvent newtype variants would be written as NameOfReactorEvent::SomeComponent(<crate::components::some_component::SomeComponent as Component<Self>::Event> in the generated code, which unfortunately is not possible due to a current shortcoming in the Rust trait system that will likely only be fixed with chalk.

As a workaround, NameOfReactorEvent::SomeComponent(crate::components::some_component::Event will be used instead. This solution only works for event types that do not have their own type parameters. If they have, the Event portion can be replaced using the event override section of the macro invocation:

    events: {
        component_a = Event<TypeArg>;
    }

This will result in crate::components::comp_a::Event<TypeArg> to be used to set the newtypes inner value instead.

Request routing

The third section defines how requests are routed:

    requests: {
        StorageRequest -> component_a;
        NetworkRequest -> component_b;
        ThirdRequest -> component_a;
        AnotherRequest -> !;
    }

In the example,

StorageRequests are routed to component_a,
NetworkRequests are routed to component_b,
ThirdRequests are routed to component_a (note that multiple requests can be routed to a single component instance), and
AnotherRequest is discarded entirely.

Routing a request ExampleRequest to an example_target means that

a NameOfReactorEvent::ExampleRequest(ExampleRequest) variant is generated,
a From<ExampleRequest> is generated for NameOfReactorEvent and
when dispatching a NameOfReactorEvent::ExampleRequest it will be turned into example_target's event type using From, then dispatched to example_target's handle_event.

Not routing a request means that the reactor does not support components that require it.

Announcement routing

Announcements are routed almost exactly like requests

    announcements: {
        NetworkAnnouncement -> [component_a, component_b];
        StorageAnnouncement -> [];
    }