This month's update covers three new versions of MESG Core, V0.5 and V0.6 and V0.7, plus a new mesg-js v2.0.0. Check out all of the new features below:

Service ID

A new parameter SID has been introduced in the service definition file.
Developer can know specify a unique ID to their services that will stay the same even if the service is deploy on another computer! No more nightmare of updating the Service’s ID after every deployment.

Example:
In the service definition file (mesg.yml):

name: "Ethereum"
sid: "com.mesg.ethereum"
description: "Ethereum Service to interact with any Smart Contract"

And then, use the SID in any command, API call or in the libraries. Eg:

mesg-core service start com.mesg.ethereum

Persistent volumes

Service’s volume are now persistent. It means that if you stop and start a service, it will still have access to its data before the stop.
Service’s developers have to set the persistent volume under the volumes parameter in the service definition.

Example:

configuration:
  volumes:
    - /home/ethereum

Env variable in Services

Service’s definition files now accept env variables!
Service developers can set the env variable in configuration and in dependencies. Eg:

name: "Parity"
sid: "com.mesg.ethereum.parity.dev"
configuration:
  env:
    - MESG_ETH_ENDPOINT=http://parity:8545
dependencies:
  parity:
    image: parity/parity:v2.1.3
    env:
      - MESG_TEST=HELLO

Users can override the env variable’s values when deploying a service. Eg:

mesg-core service deploy https://github.com/mesg-foundation/service-ethereum --env MESG_ETH_ENDPOINT=http://parity:8546

Execution error

Execution have a new state “failed” that is used when unexpected errors occurred on the service side. Application can now be notified when executions failed and the service didn’t work as expected.

Advance data definition in service definition

Service’s definition now accepts three new ways to describe the service’s data.

Array

We introduced the parameter repeated to specify arrays.
Each element of the array has the type define with the parameter type.

tasks:
  list:
    outputs:
      success:
        data:
          addresses:
            type: String
            repeated: true

{
  "addresses": ["string1", "string2", "string3"]
}

Nested Object

Object definition can now be a lot more precise with the introduction of the parameter object.
object parameter accept a map of keys / parameters.

tasks: 
  sign:
    inputs:
      transaction:
        type: Object
        object:
          nonce:
            type: Number
          to:
            type: String
          value:
            type: Number
          gasLimit:
            type: Number
          gasPrice:
            type: Number

{
  "transaction": {
    "nonce": 1,
    "to": "0x1",
    "value": 1000000000,
    "gasLimit": 1000000,
    "gasPrice": 21000000
  }
}

Any

The type Any has been added to accept any type of data. No verification is done when using this type.

tasks: 
  exec:
    inputs:
      data:
        type: Any

More info in the docs: https://docs.mesg.com/guide/service/service-file.html 1

MESG-js v.2.0.0

A new version of the mesg-js library has been released: v2.0.0.
You can install it to your project with npm i -S mesg-js@latest

With this release we completely changed the high level application APIs. We removed the When-Then logic and now have much more flexible new 4 funcs.

Added funcs are:

• listenEvent()
• listenResult()
• executeTask()
• executeTaskAndWaitResult()

Please see the new application APIs here 1. And check the updated quick start tutorial 1 to see these new APIs in action.

With this release we also updated TS types to be more precise, introduced options to application() constructor to configure Core’s endpoint and made some internal improvements.

Happy coding… 🙂

Refer to Github or the the complete changelogs of V0.5, V0.6 and V0.7.

To update to the latest version, follow the installation process on the documentation