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How to Run an API Node

This guide shows you how to run a local API node using Docker images. There are several components that must be configured and run in a specific order for the local API node to work.

Note: the order in which the services are brought up is very important. In order to start the API node successfully, you need to bring up the services in the following order:

  1. postgres
  2. stacks-blockchain-api
  3. stacks-blockchain

When bringing down the API node, you should bring the services down in the reverse order in which they were brought up in order to avoid losing data.

note

This guide focuses on Unix-like operating systems (Linux and MacOS). This has not been tested on Windows.

Prerequisites​

Running a node has no specialized hardware requirements. Users have been successful in running nodes on Raspberry Pi boards and other system-on-chip architectures. However, in order to complete this guide, you do need the following software installed on the node host machine:

Firewall configuration​

In order for the API node services to work correctly, you must configure any network firewall rules to allow traffic on the ports discussed in this section. The details of network and firewall configuration are highly specific to your machine and network, so a detailed example isn't provided.

The following ports must open on the host machine:

Ingress:

  • postgres (open to localhost only):
    • 5432 TCP
  • stacks-blockchain-api
    • 3999 TCP
  • stacks-blockchain (open to 0.0.0.0/0):
    • 20443 TCP
    • 20444 TCP

Egress:

  • 8332
  • 8333
  • 20443-20444

These egress ports are for syncing the stacks-blockchain and Bitcoin headers. If they're not open, the sync will fail.

Step 1: Initial setup​

In order to run the API node, you must download the Docker images and create a directory structure to hold the persistent data from the services. Download and configure the Docker images with the following commands:

docker pull blockstack/stacks-blockchain-api && docker pull blockstack/stacks-blockchain && docker pull postgres:alpine
docker network create stacks-blockchain > /dev/null 2>&1

Create a directory structure for the service data with the following command:

mkdir -p ./stacks-node/{persistent-data/postgres,persistent-data/stacks-blockchain,bns,config} && cd stacks-node

Step 2: Running Postgres​

The postgres:alpine Docker container can be run with default settings. You must set the password for the user to postgres with the POSTGRES_PASSWORD environment variable. The following command starts the image:

docker run -d --rm \
  --name postgres \
  --net=stacks-blockchain \
  -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres \
  -v $(pwd)/persistent-data/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data \
  -p 5432:5432 \
  postgres:alpine

You can verify the running Postgres instance on port 5432 with the command

docker ps --filter name=postgres

Step 3: Running Stacks blockchain API​

The stacks-blockchain-api image requires several environment variables to be set. To reduce the complexity of the run command, you should create a new .env file and add the following to it using a text editor:

NODE_ENV=production
GIT_TAG=master
PG_HOST=postgres
PG_PORT=5432
PG_USER=postgres
PG_PASSWORD=postgres
PG_DATABASE=postgres
STACKS_CHAIN_ID=0x00000001
V2_POX_MIN_AMOUNT_USTX=90000000260
STACKS_CORE_EVENT_PORT=3700
STACKS_CORE_EVENT_HOST=0.0.0.0
STACKS_BLOCKCHAIN_API_PORT=3999
STACKS_BLOCKCHAIN_API_HOST=0.0.0.0
STACKS_BLOCKCHAIN_API_DB=pg
STACKS_CORE_RPC_HOST=stacks-blockchain
STACKS_CORE_RPC_PORT=20443
BNS_IMPORT_DIR=/bns-data
info

This guide configures the API to import BNS data with the BNS_IMPORT_DIR variable. To turn off this import, comment the line out by placing a # at the beginning of the line. If you leave the BNS import enabled, it may take several minutes for the container to start while it imports the data.

The PG_HOST and STACKS_CORE_RPC_HOST variables define the container names for postgres and stacks-blockchain. You may wish to alter those values if you have named those containers differently than this guide.

Start the stacks-blockchain-api image with the following command:

docker run -d --rm \
  --name stacks-blockchain-api \
  --net=stacks-blockchain \
  --env-file $(pwd)/.env \
  -v $(pwd)/bns:/bns-data \
  -p 3700:3700 \
  -p 3999:3999 \
  blockstack/stacks-blockchain-api

You can verify the running stacks-blockchain-api container with the command:

docker ps --filter name=stacks-blockchain-api

Step 4: Running Stacks blockchain​

A usable API instance needs to have data from a running stacks-blockchain instance.

Because we're focusing on running the API with Docker, it also makes things easier if we run the stacks-blockchain-api instance similarly.

With that in mind, you will need to have the following in your Config.toml - this config block will send blockchain events to the API instance that was started earlier:

[[events_observer]]
endpoint = "<fqdn>:3700"
retry_count = 255
events_keys = ["*"]

Here is an example Config.toml that you can use. Create this file as ./config/Config.toml:

[node]
working_dir = "/root/stacks-node/data"
rpc_bind = "0.0.0.0:20443"
p2p_bind = "0.0.0.0:20444"
bootstrap_node = "02196f005965cebe6ddc3901b7b1cc1aa7a88f305bb8c5893456b8f9a605923893@seed.mainnet.hiro.so:20444"
wait_time_for_microblocks = 10000

[[events_observer]]
endpoint = "stacks-blockchain-api:3700"
retry_count = 255
events_keys = ["*"]

[burnchain]
chain = "bitcoin"
mode = "mainnet"
peer_host = "bitcoin.blockstack.com"
username = "blockstack"
password = "blockstacksystem"
rpc_port = 8332
peer_port = 8333

[connection_options]
read_only_call_limit_write_length = 0
read_only_call_limit_read_length = 100000
read_only_call_limit_write_count = 0
read_only_call_limit_read_count = 30
read_only_call_limit_runtime = 1000000000

The [[events_observer]] block configures the instance to send blockchain events to the API container that you started previously.

Start the stacks-blockchain container with the following command:

docker run -d --rm \
  --name stacks-blockchain \
  --net=stacks-blockchain \
  -v $(pwd)/persistent-data/stacks-blockchain:/root/stacks-node/data \
  -v $(pwd)/config:/src/stacks-node \
  -p 20443:20443 \
  -p 20444:20444 \
  blockstack/stacks-blockchain \
/bin/stacks-node start --config /src/stacks-node/Config.toml

You can verify the stacks-blockchain instance running on the ports 20443-20444:

$ docker ps --filter name=stacks-blockchain$
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                          COMMAND                  CREATED          STATUS          PORTS                                                                   NAMES
199e37a324f1   blockstack/stacks-blockchain   "/bin/stacks-node st…"   1 minute ago   Up 1 minute   0.0.0.0:20443-20444->20443-20444/tcp, :::20443-20444->20443-20444/tcp   stacks-blockchain

Step 5: Verifying the services​

You can now verify that each of the services is running and talking to the others.

To verify the database is ready:

  1. Connect to the Postgres instance with the command psql -h localhost -U postgres. Use the password from the POSTGRES_PASSWORD environment variable you set when running the container.
  2. List current databases with the command \l
  3. Disconnect from the database with the command \q

To verify that the stacks-blockchain tip height is progressing, use the following command:

curl -sL localhost:20443/v2/info | jq

If the instance is running, you should receive terminal output similar to the following:

{
  "peer_version": 402653184,
  "pox_consensus": "89d752034e73ed10d3b97e6bcf3cff53367b4166",
  "burn_block_height": 666143,
  "stable_pox_consensus": "707f26d9d0d1b4c62881a093c99f9232bc74e744",
  "stable_burn_block_height": 666136,
  "server_version": "stacks-node 2.0.11.1.0-rc1 (master:67dccdf, release build, linux [x86_64])",
  "network_id": 1,
  "parent_network_id": 3652501241,
  "stacks_tip_height": 61,
  "stacks_tip": "e08b2fe3dce36fd6d015c2a839c8eb0885cbe29119c1e2a581f75bc5814bce6f",
  "stacks_tip_consensus_hash": "ad9f4cb6155a5b4f5dcb719d0f6bee043038bc63",
  "genesis_chainstate_hash": "74237aa39aa50a83de11a4f53e9d3bb7d43461d1de9873f402e5453ae60bc59b",
  "unanchored_tip": "74d172df8f8934b468c5b0af2efdefe938e9848772d69bcaeffcfe1d6c6ef041",
  "unanchored_seq": 0,
  "exit_at_block_height": null
}

Verify the stacks-blockchain-api is receiving data from the stacks-blockchain with the following command:

curl -sL localhost:3999/v2/info | jq

If the instance is configured correctly, you should receive terminal output similar to the following:

{
  "peer_version": 402653184,
  "pox_consensus": "e472cadc17dcf3bc1afafc6aa595899e55f25b72",
  "burn_block_height": 666144,
  "stable_pox_consensus": "6a6fb0aa75a8acd4919f56c9c4c81ce5bc42cac1",
  "stable_burn_block_height": 666137,
  "server_version": "stacks-node 2.0.11.1.0-rc1 (master:67dccdf, release build, linux [x86_64])",
  "network_id": 1,
  "parent_network_id": 3652501241,
  "stacks_tip_height": 61,
  "stacks_tip": "e08b2fe3dce36fd6d015c2a839c8eb0885cbe29119c1e2a581f75bc5814bce6f",
  "stacks_tip_consensus_hash": "ad9f4cb6155a5b4f5dcb719d0f6bee043038bc63",
  "genesis_chainstate_hash": "74237aa39aa50a83de11a4f53e9d3bb7d43461d1de9873f402e5453ae60bc59b",
  "unanchored_tip": "74d172df8f8934b468c5b0af2efdefe938e9848772d69bcaeffcfe1d6c6ef041",
  "unanchored_seq": 0,
  "exit_at_block_height": null
}

Once the API is running, you can use it to interact with other API endpoints.

Stopping the API node​

As discussed previously, if you want to bring down your API node, you must stop the services in the reverse order that you started them. Performing the shutdown in this order ensures that you don't lose any data while shutting down the node.

Use the following commands to stop the local API node:

docker stop stacks-blockchain
docker stop stacks-blockchain-api
docker stop postgres

Additional reading​