<blockcerts-verifier>

A standalone universal viewer & verifier for blockcerts credentials

Production

The component is developed with Polymer 3. To use the component in your project, install it via:

  npm i @blockcerts/blockcerts-verifier

If your project does not require support for IE11, you can use the following build:

  <script src="node_modules/@blockcerts/blockcerts-verifier/dist/main.js"></script>

  <blockcerts-verifier></blockcerts-verifier>

Chrome will support natively the code, but for Firefox, Safari, MS Edge (Opera and Brave), you will need to add the webcomponent loader before:

    <script src="node_modules/@webcomponents/webcomponentsjs/webcomponents-loader.js"></script>

If your project requires support for IE11, you will need to use the ie11 build:

  <script src="node_modules/@webcomponents/webcomponentsjs/custom-elements-es5-adapter.js"></script>
  <script src="node_modules/@webcomponents/webcomponentsjs/webcomponents-loader.js"></script>
  <script src="node_modules/@blockcerts/blockcerts-verifier/dist/ie11.js"></script>

Please note that because this is transpiled to ES5, the custom-elements-es5-adapter code is required for it to work properly in more modern browsers.

Have a look at the Demo Pages to see examples of the usage

API Usage

Default behavior

By the default, the component will:

• Display a Blockcerts record in card mode (concise information)
• Will allow verification of a Blockcerts Record
• Enables auto-verification (verification as the record is loaded)

API

The component will understand the following options:

• allow-download: (Boolean. default: false). Enables the download of the record. At this moment only records provided by Learning Machine are downloadable.

  Example:

  <blockcerts-verifier allow-download></blockcerts-verifier>

• allow-social-share: (Boolean. default: false). Allows sharing the record on the social networks (LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter).

  Example:

  <blockcerts-verifier allow-social-share></blockcerts-verifier>

• disable-auto-verify: (Boolean. default: false). Disables starting automatically the verification sequence as the record is loaded.

  Example:

  <blockcerts-verifier disable-auto-verify></blockcerts-verifier>

• disable-verify: (Boolean. default: false). Disables verification of the record altogether.

  Example:

  <blockcerts-verifier disable-verify></blockcerts-verifier>

• display-mode: (String, oneOf('card', 'full', 'fullscreen'). default: card). Changes the display of a record.

  • card will be a concise summary of the record with a link to the full record.
  • full will show the actual record as designed by the emitter.
  • fullscreen will display a two-column overlay (in desktop) that takes the window dimensions. The certificate displays similar as full. NOTA: only works for certificates that have a displayHTML property.

  Example:

  <blockcerts-verifier display-mode="full"></blockcerts-verifier>

• show-metadata: (Boolean. default: false). Enables showing the metadata of a record.

  Example:

  <blockcerts-verifier show-metadata></blockcerts-verifier>

• src: (String. default: ''). Allows loading an initial record with no further actions required. src can be either an absolute URL, or a relative path.

  Example:

  <blockcerts-verifier src='../fixtures/valid-certificate-example.json'></blockcerts-verifier>

• theme: (String. default: 'bright'). Adapts to the background of the page that hosts the component. If the component is displayed on a dark background, you should use the dark option. If it's bright, then use the bright option.

  Example:

  <blockcerts-verifier theme='dark'></blockcerts-verifier>

• locale: (String. default: 'auto', if language code not recognized will default to English (en)). View src/i18n/lang to see the list of supported languages. Contributions welcome.

  Example:

  <blockcerts-verifier locale='fr'></blockcerts-verifier>

• clickable-urls: (Boolean, default: false). When set to true, the certificate view will identify and convert to clickable links (<a href=...) any url ([http(s)://(www.)]blockcerts.org/[params]) contained in the displayHTML` property of the certificate.

Custom Blockchain explorers - explorerAPIs

Since v4.1.0 of cert-verifier-js accepts custom blockchain explorers, Blockcerts Verifier facilitates communicating such service for the verification process.

As the object would be quite complicated, the option cannot be passed as attribute, but rather via property, as follows:

const explorer = {
  parsingFunction: function (): TransactionData {},
  serviceURL: 'your-explorer-service.url',
  priority: 0 | 1
}
    
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function () {
  const bv = document.querySelector('blockcerts-verifier');
  bv.explorerAPIs = [explorer];
});

See this section: https://github.com/blockchain-certificates/cert-verifier-js#explorerapis to get more information.

Event Tracking API

The component will emit events on different moment of the certificate life cycle. To subscribe and track these events you should add on your consumer page event listeners on the window object.

See the event demo page for a working example.

The information is communicated via the detail key of the event.

Supported Events:

• certificate-load

  Triggered when a certificate has been loaded into the component. Returns:

  • the certificateDefinition (object) on which the action was called.

• certificate-verify

  Triggered when the verification process of a certificate is started. Returns:

  • the certificateDefinition (object) on which the action was called.

• certificate-share

  Triggered when a social network link is clicked. Returns:

  • the certificateDefinition (object) on which the action was called.
  • the socialNetwork (string) to which the record was shared.

Development

Viewing Your Element

npm run start

Will make the demo page available on http://localhost:8081/demo/.

Modifying the Sanitizer

The sanitizer is used in order to protect against malicious certificates that could hold XSS attacks. It is an overlay of the xss library, since at times, you might want to be able to configure or adapt the whitelist to your own needs.

To modify it, you should edit the sanitizer/index.js file.

Whitelist CSS properties

More specifically if you wish to whitelist some CSS properties, add them to the object whiteListedCssProperties.

Generate the updated sanitizer

  npm run build:sanitizer

This will generate the sanitizer.js file, which is then used by the application and the tests.

If you want to work on the sanitizer in watch mode (and auto-generate your changes), use the following command:

  npm run build:sanitizer -- -w

Running Tests

Application Tests

npm run test:application

NOTE: application must be started to run the tests, or at the very least the mock-server via the npm run start:mock-server (automatically included in the npm run start command).

watch mode

npm run test:application:watch

Component Tests

npm run test:components

"watch" mode

npm run test:components:persist

Will allow refreshing the test page: http://localhost:8000/components/blockcerts-verifier/generated-index.html?cli_browser_id=0

Dealing with CSS

The npm run start command will also start a SASS compiler watcher, which means that any stylesheet within the components folder will be transpiled to a polymer component that can be reused within another component. ie:

import CSS from './_components.button-css';
[...]
_render () {
    return html`${CSS}[...]`
}

Using shared styles

To reduce the amount of code duplication, and following the ITCSS philosophy, you may need to import some of the shared-styles in your component. To do so, in your component's SASS file, add the following instruction:

/* in _components.my-component.sass */

@import '../../../shared-styles/objects.text';

[...component styles]

@import '../../../shared-styles/utils.a11y';

Please note that the SASS watcher does not observe changes in the shared styles folder, and will not automatically recompile any consumer stylesheet. You will have to recompile them yourselves (TODO: improve DevX here).

More info

Please have a look through the ADR documentation to get more context around the architecture and the ways of developing a component.