Polkadot-API updates thread

Tech Talk
17

Hello community :wave:

Again, one post summarizing our last two weeks of work! And, indeed, we released a new update, polkadot-api@1.6 is out there!

polkadot-api@1.6

This release comes with some bug fixing raised by our adopters, and some features as well!

Custom Signed Extensions

A request we had for some time was that our library did not support “custom” signed extensions, understood as extensions that are not widely used in the ecosystem and just affect one or a couple of chains. This is the case, for instance, of Avail’s appId. We now leave the consumer decide what to do with the extensions that are unknown to polkadot-api library.

Increased support to metadata v14

In this version we fixed some critical aspects regarding metadata retrieval and transaction validation that should increase the stability for those chains that only support this metadata version. Nevertheless, we encourage all teams to migrate in a timely manner to metadata v15, since it comes with several improvements; e.g. typed runtime-apis.

Other stuff

  • Once again, we have improved the library’s stability and reliability, particularly when handling "stop" events, connection errors, etc. Special thanks to @mcornholio for their invaluable help on this regard!
  • The polkadot-api now supports chains that use u64-based block numbers, including Kilt. We’re thrilled to have the Kilt team onboard!

JSON-RPC API SPEC

Since the release of polkadot-api@1.0, we’ve had to develop several “enhancers” for our WebSocket provider to ensure smooth integration with nodes based on polkadot-sdk, since they are not fully spec-compliant. We’re quite pleased with the results, as it highlights the flexibility and composability of our provider interface.

Besides that, we’ve just published a post on this forum sharing the insights we’ve gathered over the past few months. Check it out! :rocket:

Chain-specific docs

@mcornholio played a crucial role in this development! He wired everything up and wrote a detailed post a few days ago explaining the entire process. Make sure to give it a read to the post, and check the docs at https://chains.papi.how!

That’s all for this week. We hope to see many of you in a few weeks at sub0 @ Bangkok :wave:

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