Tracking State

In this chapter, we'll learn how to keep track of some state inside our ExEx.

Let's continue with our Hello World example from the previous chapter.

Turning ExEx into a struct

First, we need to turn our ExEx into a stateful struct.

Before, we had just an async function, but now we'll need to implement the Future trait manually.

use std::{
    future::Future,
    pin::Pin,
    task::{ready, Context, Poll},
};

use futures_util::{FutureExt, TryStreamExt};
use reth::{api::FullNodeComponents, builder::NodeTypes, primitives::EthPrimitives};
use reth_exex::{ExExContext, ExExEvent, ExExNotification};
use reth_node_ethereum::EthereumNode;
use reth_tracing::tracing::info;

struct MyExEx<Node: FullNodeComponents> {
    ctx: ExExContext<Node>,
}

impl<Node: FullNodeComponents<Types: NodeTypes<Primitives = EthPrimitives>>> Future
    for MyExEx<Node>
{
    type Output = eyre::Result<()>;

    fn poll(self: Pin<&mut Self>, cx: &mut Context<'_>) -> Poll<Self::Output> {
        let this = self.get_mut();

        while let Some(notification) = ready!(this.ctx.notifications.try_next().poll_unpin(cx))? {
            match &notification {
                ExExNotification::ChainCommitted { new } => {
                    info!(committed_chain = ?new.range(), "Received commit");
                }
                ExExNotification::ChainReorged { old, new } => {
                    info!(from_chain = ?old.range(), to_chain = ?new.range(), "Received reorg");
                }
                ExExNotification::ChainReverted { old } => {
                    info!(reverted_chain = ?old.range(), "Received revert");
                }
            };

            if let Some(committed_chain) = notification.committed_chain() {
                this.ctx
                    .events
                    .send(ExExEvent::FinishedHeight(committed_chain.tip().num_hash()))?;
            }
        }

        Poll::Ready(Ok(()))
    }
}

fn main() -> eyre::Result<()> {
    reth::cli::Cli::parse_args().run(async move |builder, _| {
        let handle = builder
            .node(EthereumNode::default())
            .install_exex("my-exex", async move |ctx| Ok(MyExEx { ctx }))
            .launch()
            .await?;

        handle.wait_for_node_exit().await
    })
}

For those who are not familiar with how async Rust works on a lower level, that may seem scary, but let's unpack what's going on here:

1. Our ExEx is now a struct that contains the context and implements the Future trait. It's now pollable (hence await-able).
2. We can't use self directly inside our poll method, and instead need to acquire a mutable reference to the data inside of the Pin. Read more about pinning in the book.
3. We also can't use await directly inside poll, and instead need to poll futures manually. We wrap the call to poll_recv(cx) into a ready! macro, so that if the channel of notifications has no value ready, we will instantly return Poll::Pending from our Future.
4. We initialize and return the MyExEx struct directly in the install_exex method, because it's a Future.

With all that done, we're now free to add more fields to our MyExEx struct, and track some state in them.

Adding state

Our ExEx will count the number of transactions in each block and log it to the console.

use std::{
    future::Future,
    pin::Pin,
    task::{ready, Context, Poll},
};

use alloy_primitives::BlockNumber;
use futures_util::{FutureExt, TryStreamExt};
use reth::{
    api::{BlockBody, FullNodeComponents},
    builder::NodeTypes,
    primitives::EthPrimitives,
};
use reth_exex::{ExExContext, ExExEvent};
use reth_node_ethereum::EthereumNode;
use reth_tracing::tracing::info;

struct MyExEx<Node: FullNodeComponents> {
    ctx: ExExContext<Node>,
    /// First block that was committed since the start of the ExEx.
    first_block: Option<BlockNumber>,
    /// Total number of transactions committed.
    transactions: u64,
}

impl<Node: FullNodeComponents> MyExEx<Node> {
    fn new(ctx: ExExContext<Node>) -> Self {
        Self { ctx, first_block: None, transactions: 0 }
    }
}

impl<Node: FullNodeComponents<Types: NodeTypes<Primitives = EthPrimitives>>> Future
    for MyExEx<Node>
{
    type Output = eyre::Result<()>;

    fn poll(self: Pin<&mut Self>, cx: &mut Context<'_>) -> Poll<Self::Output> {
        let this = self.get_mut();

        while let Some(notification) = ready!(this.ctx.notifications.try_next().poll_unpin(cx))? {
            if let Some(reverted_chain) = notification.reverted_chain() {
                this.transactions = this.transactions.saturating_sub(
                    reverted_chain.blocks_iter().map(|b| b.body().transaction_count() as u64).sum(),
                );
            }

            if let Some(committed_chain) = notification.committed_chain() {
                this.first_block.get_or_insert(committed_chain.first().number);

                this.transactions += committed_chain
                    .blocks_iter()
                    .map(|b| b.body().transaction_count() as u64)
                    .sum::<u64>();

                this.ctx
                    .events
                    .send(ExExEvent::FinishedHeight(committed_chain.tip().num_hash()))?;
            }

            if let Some(first_block) = this.first_block {
                info!(%first_block, transactions = %this.transactions, "Total number of transactions");
            }
        }

        Poll::Ready(Ok(()))
    }
}

fn main() -> eyre::Result<()> {
    reth::cli::Cli::parse_args().run(async move |builder, _| {
        let handle = builder
            .node(EthereumNode::default())
            .install_exex("my-exex", async move |ctx| Ok(MyExEx::new(ctx)))
            .launch()
            .await?;

        handle.wait_for_node_exit().await
    })
}

As you can see, we added two fields to our ExEx struct:

• first_block to keep track of the first block that was committed since the start of the ExEx.
• transactions to keep track of the total number of transactions committed, accounting for reorgs and reverts.

We also changed our match block to two if clauses:

• First one checks if there's a reverted chain using notification.reverted_chain(). If there is:
  • We subtract the number of transactions in the reverted chain from the total number of transactions.
  • It's important to do the saturating_sub here, because if we just started our node and instantly received a reorg, our transactions field will still be zero.
• Second one checks if there's a committed chain using notification.committed_chain(). If there is:
  • We update the first_block field to the first block of the committed chain.
  • We add the number of transactions in the committed chain to the total number of transactions.
  • We send a FinishedHeight event back to the main node.

Finally, on every notification, we log the total number of transactions and the first block that was committed since the start of the ExEx.