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Getting Started with Notifi Hosted Development

warning

This feature is currently in beta, and is not available to new users by default. If you would like to use this feature, please reach out to Notifi and ask for it to be enabled for your Dapp account.

In this third Getting Started guide, we will walk through the steps of creating a topic generated from code that Notifi runs automatically to monitor on or off-chain activity.

This guide is intended as a follow-up to the first Getting Started guide, which walks you through the process of creating a Notifi account and subscription card, and the Getting Started With Self-Hosted Messaging guide, which walks you through the process of creating a topic that is triggered by code running on your own servers. It is highly recommended that you follow that startup guide first.

Prerequisites​

  • If on Windows, set up Windows Subsystem for Linux. This is required for both Docker and for setting up the parser development environment, which is instantiated using a Bash script. (The CLI can be used directly on a macOS or Linux terminal).
  • Install Docker.

Creating a Notifi-Hosted Topic​

In the Alert Manager page on Admin Portal, click Create Topic (or + Topic if you already have an existing topic), then click Have Notifi monitor on or off-chain activity to send alerts.

note

If this button says "Coming soon" instead of "Continue", then Notifi-hosted development is not enabled for your account. Please reach out to Notifi.

In the dialog box that appears, enter a name for your topic, then click Next. (We will keep the defaults for the other settings, just as we did for self-hosted topics).

On the second page, we can choose the parameters for when our parser code will run. We can either have the code trigger on an event on a specific chain, or at a given time interval. For this guide, we will choose the latter.

  • Under "Is this alert on or off chain", choose Off-chain
  • In the Name Parser text box, enter a name for your parser
  • Under "How often would you like your parser to run?", choose a frequency of 5 minutes.
  • Click Save Topic

Defining Templates​

As with self-hosted topics, you will need to define templates. We will define some basic templates for our Notifi-hosted parser:

  1. On the Alert Manager page, go to your newly created topic and click Define Templates.
  2. In the dialog that appears, you'll be offered some text boxes for defining templates for the subject line and content for your Alert History messages.
    • Select one of the available icons in the "Select Icon" dropdown
    • In the Subject text box, enter {{eventdata.subject}}
    • In the HTML Content text box, enter <span>{{eventdata.message}}</span>
    • Click Save. You'll get a dialog box saying that the template has been uploaded.
  3. Click the Email button on the left. This will switch your view to editing email templates.
    • In the Subject text box, enter {{eventdata.subject}}
    • In the Custom HTML text box, enter <p>{{eventdata.message}}</p>
    • Click Save. You'll get a dialog box saying that the template has been uploaded.
  4. Click the circular X button on the top right to return to Alert Manager.

Creating the Parser​

Now that you have your templates, it's time to create the parser!

  1. On the Alert Manager page, go to your topic and click Edit Parser.
  2. In the dialog box that appears, copy the command shown. It should look something like this:
FUSION_SOURCE_ID="024ea..." NOTIFI_AUTH_TOKEN="eyJhb..." /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/notifi-network/notifi-parser-sdk/main/start.sh)"
  1. Paste this command into your terminal (if on Windows, use your WSL terminal). This script will set up the Notifi parser development environment, create a directory for your parser, and start a shell in that directory with access to the parser CLI.
  2. Open the parser source in your IDE (e.g. Visual Studio Code). The parser is stored in $HOME/.notifi/fusion-development/fusion-sources/$PARSER_NAME, where $HOME is your home directory and $PARSER_NAME is the name you gave to your parser earlier.

Editing And Submitting Your Parser​

For our actual parser code, we're going to write something simple that displays the current time. Replace the code in src/parser.ts with the following:

import { Offchain, CommonHost, BlockchainType } from "@notifi-network/fusion-types";
const eventID = "07ca3ca8e4d745aab8c966a21bb390d5";

const parse: Offchain.Parser["parse"] = async (
  args,
  rpc,
  storage,
  logger,
  subscriptions
) => {
  const now = new Date();
  const timeString = `${now.getHours().toString().padStart(2, "0")}:${now.getMinutes().toString().padStart(2, "0")}:${now.getSeconds().toString().padStart(2, "0")}`;
  const event: CommonHost.Event = {
    eventTypeId: eventID.toLowerCase(),
    blockchain: BlockchainType.BLOCKCHAIN_TYPE_OFF_CHAIN,
    metadata: {
      subject: "Test subject",
      message: "The current time is " + timeString
    },
    comparisonValue: "*",
    changeSignature: now.getTime().toString()
  }
  return [ event ];
};

export { parse };

Back in the CLI for the Notifi parser environment, type

$ fusion parser upload

to build and upload your parser source to Notifi!

Then, go back to Alert Manager in Admin Portal, click your topic, and look for the Parser card. Click the Active button, and enter a number in the dialog box that appears (this is normally the block number you want to start from, but since we're writing an off-chain parser, this can be any number).

Wait a few minutes, and you should start seeing emails come in telling you what time it is!

To deactivate the parser, either click the Inactive button in the Parser card, or enter

$ fusion parser deactivate

in the Parser CLI.

Next Steps​

More details on parser development​

Notifi hosted parsers can cover other, more complex cases, such as covering events on a specific chain, and also have access to additional APIs for blockchain access, storage, and Internet access. For more information, check out our Notifi Hosted Development guide!

Style Your Notifications​

We created very basic templates for our messages, but Notifi's template system is also capable of more advanced templates with additional and nested variables. Check out our template guide for more information!

Adding Additional Destination Platforms​

Notifi notifications can be delivered through email, Telegram, Discord, Slack, and more. A few of these platforms require you to supply a bot for Notifi to use. It is also possible to send email via your own custom domain:

Additional resources​

Get Help​

  • We use Jira as a ticketing platform to track issues, questions, and requests at Notifi. If you have anything that you need from us, please create a support ticket using the link here
  • Reach out to the key Notifi contacts