Building Your Service Provider

Since a lot of logic you will write in this section is similar or the same to UC code you just written, this section will only focus on SP-specific functionality

• Paste the following code into src/index.ts

import WebSocket, { MessageEvent } from "ws";

var ourAddress:          string;
var websocketConnection: any;

async function main() {
    var port = '1978' 
    var localClientUrl = "ws://127.0.0.1:" + port;

    // Set up and handle websocket connection to our desktop client.
    websocketConnection = await connectWebsocket(localClientUrl).then(function (c) {
        return c;
    }).catch(function (err) {
        console.log("Websocket connection error. Is the client running with <pre>--connection-type WebSocket</pre> on port " + port + "?");
        console.log(err);
    })

    websocketConnection.onmessage = function (e : any) {
        handleResponse(e);
    };

    sendSelfAddressRequest();
}

// Handle any messages that come back down the websocket. 
function handleResponse(responseMessageEvent : MessageEvent) {

    try {
            let response = JSON.parse(responseMessageEvent.data.toString());
        if (response.type == "error") {
            console.log("\x1b[91mAn error occured: " + response.message + "\x1b[0m")
        } else if (response.type == "selfAddress") {
            ourAddress = response.address;
            console.log("\x1b[94mOur address is: " + ourAddress + "\x1b[0m")
        } else if (response.type == "received") {
            let messageContent = JSON.parse(response.message)

            console.log('\x1b[93mRecieved : \x1b[0m');
            console.log('\x1b[92mName : ' + messageContent.name + '\x1b[0m');
            console.log('\x1b[92mService : ' + messageContent.service + '\x1b[0m');
            console.log('\x1b[92mComment : ' + messageContent.comment + '\x1b[0m');

            console.log('\x1b[93mSending response back to client... \x1b[0m')

	    sendMessageToMixnet(response.senderTag)
        }
    } catch (_) {
        console.log('something went wrong in handleResponse')
    }
}

function sendMessageToMixnet(senderTag: string) {

    // Place each of the form values into a single object to be sent.
    const messageContentToSend = {
        text: 'We recieved your request - this reply sent to you anonymously with SURBs',
        fromAddress : ourAddress
    }
    
    const message = {
        type: "reply",
        message: JSON.stringify(messageContentToSend),
    	senderTag: senderTag
    }
    
    // Send our message object via out via our websocket connection.
    websocketConnection.send(JSON.stringify(message));
}

// Send a message to the mixnet client, asking what our own address is. 
function sendSelfAddressRequest() {
    var selfAddress = {
        type: "selfAddress"
    }
    websocketConnection.send(JSON.stringify(selfAddress));
}

// Function that connects our application to the mixnet Websocket. We want to call this first in our main function.
function connectWebsocket(url : string) {
    return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) {
        var server = new WebSocket(url);
        console.log('connecting to Mixnet Websocket (Nym Client)...')
        server.onopen = function () {
            resolve(server);
        };
        server.onerror = function (err) {
            reject(err);
        };

    });
}

main();

main() is still the function in charge of initializing and executing your application. Note that the SP’s client is running on port 1978. This is so we don’t have a conflict with the client we have running for the UC part of our tutorial code!

handleResponse() works in a similar manner as the function with the same name in simple-service-provider/user-client/src/index.ts. This implementation logs to the console instead of passing messages to a UI.

The \x1b prefix you see in console.log adds colour to console ouput. The number that you see following the [ and preceeding m is the colour code that can be compared here. Its a nice and quick way of styling our terminal output.

When the SP receives a message from the mixnet, sendMessageToMixnet() sends a response back to notify the the user that the SP recieved their request successfully.

Connecting to your Nym Client

• Follow instructions in the Nym websocket client documentationto init and run a client.

• Refresh your browser window. You should see a successful response, including a Nym address, in your console:

> service-provider@1.0.0 start:dev
> nodemon

[nodemon] 2.0.20
[nodemon] to restart at any time, enter `rs`
[nodemon] watching path(s): src/**/*
[nodemon] watching extensions: ts,js
[nodemon] starting `ts-node ./src/index.ts`
connecting to Mixnet Websocket (Nym Client)...
Our address is: 6V5eEguz4rUsfntVLKQuD2ymgdY5iDKCV2GY2EH3CxG4.AKdk22atwRaVkN2PLEDsWUKKDc3ieNm1avKqVGgmJx8s@FQon7UwF5knbUr2jf6jHhmNLbJnMreck1eUcVH59kxYE

Set Service Address in User Client

The final step of this tutorial is to update our User Client code with the address of the now-running Service Provider so it can send it a message.

Copy the SP’s Nym address from your console and set it as the value of the targetAddress variable on line 2 of simple-service-provider/user-client/src/index.ts.

var targetAddress: string = '6V5eEguz4rUsfntVLKQuD2ymgdY5iDKCV2GY2EH3CxG4.AKdk22atwRaVkN2PLEDsWUKKDc3ieNm1avKqVGgmJx8s@FQon7UwF5knbUr2jf6jHhmNLbJnMreck1eUcVH59kxYE';