Enable WebSocket support of Ganache CLI and Subscribe to Events

This week, Ganache CLI released beta version 7.0.0 which introduces support for WebSocket. It means that features in Web3 1.0.0 such as block event subscription and contract event listening is now possible.

This article serves as a brief walkthrough on how to enable WebSocket support of Ganache CLI and what you can do with it.

Be aware that, as of January 2018, Ganache-cli 7.0.0 has just released its first beta version. Try it at your discretion.

1. Start the Ganache CLI
2. Start a Listening Server
   1. Create Web3 Instance
   2. Get Contract Instance
   3. Subscribe to Block Events
   4. Subscribe to All Contract Events

Start the Ganache CLI

Run ganache-cli --networkId [MY_NETWORK_ID] will start the client on the localhost at the default port 8545 with the specified network ID. You can configure the hostname or the port using --hostname or --port argument, respectively.

Start a Listening Server

This article used express.js, but any server on Node.js should work. Details for server setup is omitted.

Create Web3 Instance

let Web3 = require('web3')
let web3 = new Web3(new Web3.providers.WebsocketProvider('ws://localhost:8545'))

note that if we use the conventional

let web3 = new Web3('http://localhost:8545')

then when you try to use the websocket-only features, it will throw Error: The current provider doesn't support subscriptions: HttpProvider

Get Contract Instance

If you use truffle to compile the contract, you can get the instance by

import MyContract from 'path/to/MyContract.json'

const myContract = new web3.eth.Contract(
  MyContract.abi,
  MyContract.networks[MY_NETWORK_ID].address,
  {from: MY_COINBASE, gas: MY_DEFAULT_GAS, gasPrice: MY_DEFAULT_GAS_PRICE}
)

Subscribe to Block Events

e.g. if we want to log the block header to the console whenever a new block is submitted to the blockchain:

web3.eth.subscribe('newBlockHeaders', function (error, blockHeader) {
  if (error) console.log(error)
  console.log(blockHeader)
})
  .on('data', function (blockHeader) {
    // alternatively we can log it here
    console.log(blockHeader)
  })

Subscribe to All Contract Events

// or `myContract.events.MyEvent` to subscribe to a specific event
myContract.events.allEvents({
  fromBlock: 0
}, function (error, event) {
  if (error) console.log(error)
  console.log(event)
})