Peer channel-based event services

General overview

The peer’s event service allows client applications to receive block events as blocks are committed to a peer’s ledger. Client applications can also request block events starting from a certain block number, allowing client applications to receive prior block events or to resume receiving events in case the application or the peer has been restarted or lost connection.

Requests to receive events are accepted from client identities of the same organization and also outside of the peer’s organization (as defined by the channel configuration).

Several different types of block events are available from a peer depending on the service requested. Block events also include any chaincode events from the transactions within the block. Each transaction may have a single chaincode event, which can be emitted by the called chaincode.

This topic describes the low-level peer event services (gRPC services) for block events. Fabric Gateway application API (for Fabric v2.4 onwards) internally utilizes the peer event services and make block events and chaincode events available to client applications through the client APIs for Fabric v2.4 onwards.

Available services

  • Deliver

This service sends entire blocks that have been committed to the ledger. If any events were set by a chaincode, these can be found within the ChaincodeActionPayload of each transaction within the block.

  • DeliverWithPrivateData

This service sends the same data as the Deliver service, and additionally includes any private data from collections that the client’s organization is authorized to access.

  • DeliverFiltered

This service sends “filtered” blocks, minimal sets of information about blocks that have been committed to the ledger. It is intended to be used in a network where owners of the peers wish for external clients to primarily receive information about their transactions and the status of those transactions. If any events were set by a chaincode, these can be found within the FilteredChaincodeAction of each transaction within the block.

Note

The payload of chaincode events will not be included in filtered blocks.

How to register for events

Registration for events is done by sending an envelope containing a deliver seek info message to the peer that contains the desired start and stop positions, the seek behavior (block until ready or fail if not ready). There are helper variables SeekOldest and SeekNewest that can be used to indicate the oldest (i.e. first) block or the newest (i.e. last) block on the ledger. To have the services send events indefinitely, the SeekInfo message should include a stop position of MAXINT64.

Note

If mutual TLS is enabled on the peer, the TLS certificate hash must be set in the envelope’s channel header.

By default, the event services use the Channel Readers policy to determine whether to authorize requesting clients for events.

Overview of deliver response messages

The event services send back DeliverResponse messages.

Each message contains one of the following:

  • status – HTTP status code. Each of the services will return the appropriate failure code if any failure occurs; otherwise, it will return 200 - SUCCESS once the service has completed sending all information requested by the SeekInfo message.

  • block – returned only by the Deliver service.

  • block and private data – returned only by the DeliverWithPrivateData service.

  • filtered block – returned only by the DeliverFiltered service.

A filtered block contains:

  • channel ID.

  • number (i.e. the block number).

  • array of filtered transactions.

  • transaction ID.

    • type (e.g. ENDORSER_TRANSACTION, CONFIG).

    • transaction validation code.

  • filtered transaction actions.
    • array of filtered chaincode actions.
      • chaincode event for the transaction (with the payload nilled out).

Application API documentation

The Fabric Gateway application API allows client applications to receive block events from all committed blocks and chaincode events emitted by successfully committed transactions. These events can be used to trigger external business processes in response to ledger updates. For further details, refer to the API documentation:

Legacy application SDKs (Note: Deprecated in Fabric v2.5) use the deliver service and allow client applications to receive block events, or only chaincode events emitted by successfully committed transactions within those blocks.

For further details, refer to the SDK documentation.