aleph-client

Python Client for the aleph.im network, next generation network of decentralized big data applications. Development follows the Aleph Whitepaper.

Documentation

Documentation can be found on https://docs.aleph.im/tools/aleph-client/

Requirements

Linux

Some cryptographic functionalities use curve secp256k1 and require installing libsecp256k1.

apt-get install -y python3-pip libsecp256k1-dev

macOs

brew tap cuber/homebrew-libsecp256k1 brew install libsecp256k1

Windows

The software is not tested on Windows, but should work using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Installation

From PyPI

Using pip and PyPI:

pip install aleph-client

Using a container

Use the Aleph client and it's CLI from within Docker or Podman with:

docker run --rm -ti -v $(pwd)/data:/data ghcr.io/aleph-im/aleph-client/aleph-client:master --help

Warning: This will use an ephemeral key pair that will be discarded when stopping the container

Installation for development

We recommend using hatch for development.

Hatch is a modern, extensible Python project manager. It creates a virtual environment for each project and manages dependencies.

pip install hatch

Running tests

hatch test

or

hatch run testing:cov

Formatting code

hatch run linting:format

Checking types

hatch run linting:typing

Publish to PyPI

hatch build hatch upload

If you want NULS2 support you will need to install nuls2-python (currently only available on github):

pip install aleph-sdk-python[nuls2]

To install from source and still be able to modify the source code:

pip install -e .

Updating the User Documentation

The user documentation for Aleph is maintained in the aleph-docs repository. When releasing a new version, it's important to update the documentation as part of the release process.

Steps for Updating Documentation

Documentation is generated using the typer command.

If you have the aleph-docs repository cloned as a sibling folder to your current directory, you can use the following command to generate updated documentation:

./scripts/gendoc.py   src/aleph_client/__main__.py docs --name aleph --title 'Aleph CLI Documentation' --output ../aleph-docs/docs/tools/aleph-client/usage.md

After generating the documentation, you may need to update the path for the private key, as this depends on the user configuration. This can be fixed manually using the sed command. For example:

sed -i 's#/home/olivier/.aleph-im/private-keys/sol2.key#~/.aleph-im/private-keys/ethereum.key#' ../aleph-docs/docs/tools/aleph-client/usage.md

This command replaces any hardcoded private key paths with the correct configuration path ( ~/.aleph-im/private-keys/ethereum.key).

Once the documentation is updated, open a Pull Request (PR) on the aleph-docs repository with your changes.