w3f-grants-archive/polkalert

Polkalert

Polkalert is an application that runs locally with validator's Substrate node and provides monitoring and alerting when relevant events happen. Alerts can be sent via email or webhooks. Polkalert also provides a convenient GUI for staking info and settings.

Polkalert is able to send you notifications about:

• Blocks not being finalized
• No blocks received
• High network lag

It can also watch your validator account for:

• Validator seen offline
• Validator has been slashed
• Validator was nominated
• Validator was denominated
• Validator produced two blocks in one slot (equivocation)
• Nominator bonded to validator
• Nominator unbonded from validator

Application stores blocks and their meta-data locally in a DB for better performance and analysis of network events.

Tech stack:

• Client (frontend): React.js, TypeScript
• Server (backend): Node.js, TypeScript, GraphQL, PostgreSQL

Project setup

1. Install node.js
2. Clone the repository
3. Open Terminal and navigate to the project folder - cd path/to/project
4. Install Yarn if you don't have it already - npm i -g yarn
5. Run the yarn command to install project dependencies
6. Run the yarn setup command to setup environment variables and default settings.
7. If you don't have docker, install docker and docker-compose https://docs.docker.com/compose/install/

Running the project

You can run the project via Terminal using the following commands:

1. yarn start:client: Runs the client, default on localhost:8080
2. yarn start:server: Runs only the server, default on localhost:4000
3. yarn start:db: Runs only the db, default on localhost:5432

You need all of the three parts: client, server and db running to run Polkalert. Alternatively, you can use shortcut command.

1. yarn start: Which runs the whole project. The client, db and the server parts will run on the ports mentioned above by default or on ports you configured via the setup script. Note that you will not have full control over each process if you run the app this way.

Navigate your browser to localhost:8080 where Polkalert client runs by default. If everything has started, you should be able to follow instructions in the UI to connect to your validator node and setup Polkalert

Troubleshooting

If you get errors upon starting client or server try running yarn setup again. Make sure the ports you are using to run Polkalert are not occuppied. If that doesn't work, run yarn reset * WARNING - this will reset all your settings to defaults.

Other Yarn scripts

Besides the start script, there are other ones which can be used to work with the project. They are supposed to be run in Terminal, while being navigated to the root directory of the project. The available scripts are:

• yarn: Installs all the dependencies, needs to be run before using the project

• yarn install:client: Installs only the client dependencies

• yarn install:server: Installs only the server dependencies

• yarn setup: Setup project environment variables and default settings

• yarn stop:db: Stops db and resets docker interfaces if it doesn't stop automatically

• yarn reset: Resets the database, server and settings to it's default state.

• yarn reset:db: Resets the database to it's default state.

• yarn reset:server: Resets the server to it's default state.

• yarn build: Builds the whole project for production

• yarn build:client: Builds only the client for production

• yarn build:server: Builds only the server for production

• yarn add:client [packageName]: Shortcut for yarn add in the client folder, all flags are forwarded

• yarn add:server [packageName]: Shortcut for yarn add in the server folder, all flags are forwarded

• yarn remove:client [packageName]: Removes and uninstalls a dependency from the client

• yarn remove:server [packageName]: Removes and uninstalls a dependency from the server

• yarn storybook: Runs Storybook (visual documentation of the client)

• yarn bump: Updates project version. Do this before pushing

• yarn lint: Runs code checks on the whole project

• yarn lint:client: Runs code checks only on the client

DEV-IMPORTANT! Make sure to:

1. Use Prettier and have the Editor: Format On Save setting in VSCode turned on to keep the code consistent.
2. Always run yarn lint before commiting your code. If the code won't pass the checks, it won't be able to be built.
3. Bump version with yarn bump
4. Check the other README.md files located in subfolders (if provided) for further info.