site/_src/_guides/how-to-connect-to-bigchaindb.md

layout	title	description	image
guide	How to connect to BigchainDB	Understand, how to get BigchainDB/IPDB up and running from the beginning to the end, so that you can start building applications on it	image.jpg

Connect to IPDB

This part explains, how to connect to IPDB testnet (Good post https://medium.com/ipdb-blog/using-the-ipdb-test-network-a615f93d50a9)

1. Create an account in IPDB and retrieve an app id etc.
2. To connect to IPDB network you need your app_id & app_key. To get both, you need to register yourself in the following link https://developers.ipdb.io/signup
3. Once done,

const API_PATH = 'https://test.ipdb.io/api/v1/'
const conn = new BigchainDB.Connection(API_PATH, {
    app_id: 'your_app_id',
    app_key: 'your_app_key'
})

Connect to REST API + Websocket

https://docs.bigchaindb.com/projects/js-driver/en/latest/usage.html#websocket-event-stream-api-usage

If you are connecting to a node that has support for the Event Stream API, you will be able to access real-time event streams over the WebSocket.

Send a HTTP GET request to the node’s API Root Endpoint (e.g. http://localhost:9984/api/v1/) to check if the response the response contains a streams property:

var wsUri = "ws://localhost:9985/api/v1/streams/valid_transactions";
function init() {
        websocket = new WebSocket(wsUri);
        websocket.onmessage = function(evt) { onMessage(evt) };
}
function onMessage(evt) {
        writeToScreen('<a href="#" class="list-group-item"><h4 class="list-group-item-heading">Valid Transaction</h4><p class="list-group-item-text">' + evt.data + '</p></a>');
}
function writeToScreen(message) {
        var pre = document.createElement("p");
        pre.style.wordWrap = "break-word";
        pre.innerHTML = message;
        output.appendChild(pre);
}
/* Initialize websocket and attach all events */
window.addEventListener("load", init, false);

Drivers and library

This part in the journey contains everything that needs to be downloaded to be able to write an application in BigchainDB/IPDB (drivers, library etc.) => shortest path to get started

Focus on JS driver in the beginning

Basecally you just need to install the driver, for JS:

$ npm install bigchaindb-driver
In case of python:
$ pip3 install bigchaindb_driver