Setting Up Command Line Utilities

We need the following five utilities to successfully execute all example cURL commands:

1. cURL command line tool to issue http requests and receive http responses.
2. jq command line tool to pretty print JSON output from cURL.
3. signer utility to compute the required digital signature for each query and transaction.
4. encoder utility to encode data to base64 encoding.
5. decoder utility to decode the base64-encoded data present in the server responses.

1) Installing cURL

You need to install the cURL utility on the server, laptop or PC from which you are planning to issue transactions and queries. Search the web to find out how to install the cURL utility on your operating system.

2) Installing jq

Instructions for installing the jq command line tool can be found here.

3) Building signer, encoder, and decoder

Refer to these six steps to build the signer, encoder, and decoder utilities. Once you execute these steps, all three utilities can be found in ./bin

3.1) Using signer

./bin/signer

prints the following

all the following two flags must be set. An example command is shown below:

  signer -data='{"userID":"admin"}" -privatekey=admin.key

  -data string
        JSON data to be signed. Surround that data with single quotes. An example of JSON data is '{"userID":"admin"}'
  -privatekey string
        path to the private key to be used for adding a digital signature

The signer utility expects two arguments: (1) data and (2) privatekey, as shown above. The data argument must be JSON data on which the digital signature is put using the private key assigned to privatekey argument.

For example, in the following command, admin puts the digital signature on the JSON data '{"user_id":"admin"}'

./bin/signer -privatekey=deployment/sample/crypto/admin/admin.key -data='{"user_id":"admin"}'

The above command produces a digital signature and prints it as base64-encoded string as shown below

MEUCIQCMEdLgfFEOF+vgXLwbeOdUUWnGB5HH2ULkoz15jlk5DgIgbWXuoyqD4szob78hZYiau9LPdJLLqP3bAu7iV98BcW0=

3.2) Using encoder

./bin/encoder

prints the following

The data field accepts a JSON or string value. THE data flag must be set. Two example commands are shown below:

  encoder -data='{"userID":"admin"}'
  encoder -data='value'

  -data string
        JSON or string data to be encoded. Surround the JSON data with single quotes. An example of JSON data is '{"userID":"admin"}'

The encoder utility expects only one argument, i.e., data, as shown above. The data argument can be a JSON or any other string that needs to be encoded using base64 encoding.

For example, in the following command, encoder outputs the base64-encoded string of {"userID":"admin"}

./bin/encoder -data='{"user_id":"admin"}'

The above command produces the base64-encoded string

eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoiYWRtaW4ifQ==

3.2) Using decoder

./bin/decoder

prints the following

The decoder decodes the base64-encoded value field in the GetDataResponseEnvelope. Pass the JSON output of GetDataResponseEnvelope to the `-getresponse` flag
  -getresponse string
        JSON output of GetDataResponseEnvelope. The value field in the JSON output will be decoded. Surround the JSON data with single quotes.

The decoder utility expects only one argument, i.e., GetDataResponseEnvelope, as shown above. The getresponse argument must be a JSON representation of GetDataResponseEnvelope.

For example, in the following command, decoder decodes the base64-encoded value filed in

{
  "response": {
    "header": {
      "node_id": "orion-server1"
    },
    "value": "eyJuYW1lIjoiYWJjIiwiYWdlIjozMSwiZ3JhZHVhdGVkIjp0cnVlfQ==",
    "metadata": {
      "version": {
        "block_num": 4
      },
      "access_control": {
        "read_users": {
          "alice": true,
          "bob": true
        },
        "read_write_users": {
          "alice": true
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "signature": "MEQCIFK/bLBAu2mzH0DmRt9SPyTDfxG5qwPHTe05C4uKjGr1AiALnlwpVQ0spTzUMxgJOEHO8Li+P/7uACGXMIQK32O6WQ=="
}

./bin/decoder -getresponse='{"response":{"header":{"node_id":"orion-server1"},"value":"eyJuYW1lIjoiYWJjIiwiYWdlIjozMSwiZ3JhZHVhdGVkIjp0cnVlfQ==","metadata":{"version":{"block_num":4},"access_control":{"read_users":{"alice":true,"bob":true},"read_write_users":{"alice":true}}}},"signature":"MEUCIHMs2zPzybWNY52JqiD+mYPNgof6/Kg/cj4KsoJPu5IXAiEAtRprbynYqFCUyU+hOzsXaQVg/iBM2CZatLr1Fo+XJcA="}' | jq .

The above command produces the base64-encoded string

{
  "response": {
    "header": {
      "node_id": "orion-server1"
    },
    "value": "{\"name\":\"abc\",\"age\":31,\"graduated\":true}",
    "metadata": {
      "version": {
        "block_num": 4
      },
      "access_control": {
        "read_users": {
          "alice": true,
          "bob": true
        },
        "read_write_users": {
          "alice": true
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "signature": "MEUCIHMs2zPzybWNY52JqiD+mYPNgof6/Kg/cj4KsoJPu5IXAiEAtRprbynYqFCUyU+hOzsXaQVg/iBM2CZatLr1Fo+XJcA="
}

It can be seen that the "value":"eyJuYW1lIjoiYWJjIiwiYWdlIjozMSwiZ3JhZHVhdGVkIjp0cnVlfQ==" has been decoded to "value": "{\"name\":\"abc\",\"age\":31,\"graduated\":true}".