Introducing the Compository

hApps Building Blocks
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#21

This is amazing!

#22
  1. There is a big open compository DNA, in which at the moment anyone can publish zomes. There is a button for that in the UI itself if you wanted to try it out. When publishing zomes, you need to provide the .wasm file and a separate .js file. These files are uploaded to a complementary file-storage-provider DHT and available to download, and the zome definition is available to everyone in the compository DHT.
    Then, when someone enters the compository UI, they list all the available zomes that exist in the network. They select the zomes that they want for their DNA, and generate and install the DNA from those. That new instance of the DNA is also published to the compository DHT for everyone to discover in the “Discover DNAs” section.
    Once they enter in the DNA, we know all the zomes that that DNA supports, and we can go fetch the UI files for those zomes. Once we get each of the files, we import their contents and we get all the blocks available for this zome (as per the interface defined below). We aggregate those and now we have the list of available blocks that can be added for this DNA. Now it’s just a matter of configuring Grapes to have those blocks available, and the blocks are autonomous in fetching the data and interacting with the conductor, so we just have to instantiate them passing the conductor-api handle and the CellId that the zome lives in.
    In the future I would like for the zome to import and contain that .js file in itself and expose a ui_module function or similar, to avoid depending on an external compository DNA. That will speed up the loading of the UI by a lot also, and will decouple the DNAs so that the agents participating in the generated DNAs don’t need to also have the compository installed.
  2. Yes, the .js file needs to export exactly this format. This is not incomplete by any means and can change, but the idea is that with a render function you can do pretty much whatever you want to render your elements (even something like Vue or React). I also could do the transition from the previous block-board element to grapes without changing that interface, which gives me confidence in it at least for now.
  3. I haven’t tried but I’m really tempted by something like Rete. Problems arise in versioning, schema changes, compatibility between modules… It’s not an easy problem to solve, I have some ideas but it’s very early for that still. Do you know any approaches that would fit here that I may not be aware of?
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#23

This is not an approach to versioning and schema changes, but might be some approaches to compatibility between modules, as in data flows between modules.

Also of course http://valueflo.ws/ as used in hREA is a vocabulary for data flows between economic modules…

1 Like
#24

Possible use case:

  • Calendar app plus Map app
  • hREA app schedules a transfer of resources from one agent to another.
  • The transfer appears on the calendar and the map.

For extra credit:

  • Add a Chat app. The map gets very busy from all the various routes going on. So in the Chat app, the agents involved in a transfer can see their transfer on the map and on the calendar and not all of the other noise.
1 Like
#25

Wow. This is really exciting!!!
I just tried to use the Compository on my Mac. But It didn’t work out. I can start the Docker thingy and I can see the website - but when I try to create a DNA, it stops. It might be an issue that my Mac is using the new M1 chip. Even for Docker I needed a special version to run it on the M1.
Nevertheless, this is an amazing start! Great job so far!
Working with no-code and low-code tools for about 4 years now, I can see the potential of such an approach for Holochain. As a UX Designer & Product Owner by trade I’d love to see this happening.
In case I can be of any help, just ping me.

Cheers,
Alex

#26

Oh thanks so much Alex :slight_smile:

So right now yes, it’s not working, because I stopped the two peers at my home that were the ones providing the file storage, in a complementary DNA. Right now I can’t bring them back up just yet, I will refactor how the UI files are downloaded and bring them back up in a newer version, hopefully not that far in the future.

Thanks for the offering though, I will ping if I need help! The biggest need right now is holochain developers who want to develop open source modules so that they can be plugged in the compository, or any other project for that matter.

2 Likes
#27

@guillemcordoba I was delighted to see https://github.com/guillemcordoba/rea-inventory !

How do you see that playing with some of the other building blocks in the Compository component inventory?

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Blocks protocol
#28

Yes exactly these are the ideas. For now the rea-inventory is just an exploration of how things could look like and at what level we can bundle rea libraries to build semantically meaningful components (inventory management as opposed to economic_resource).

Next up, I want to integrate rete to allow for integration of modules. I am still trying to figure out what’s the best way to have modular code depend on each other, mostly from the UI side. Will update you when all this is integrated.

4 Likes
#29

I’m very glad you are going down this path!

1 Like