IBM Cloud VSCode Blockchain Extension

Created: Using the VSCode Extension for Interacting with a Blockchain

Updated: 03 September 2023

Note: Just use Ubuntu, you shouldn’t run into all the build issues that you will with Windows for Node

VSCode Extension

Download the VSCode Extension from the Extensions Tab named IBM Blockchain, when that is done click Reload to reload your VSCode. Next you will see that the IBM Blockchain extension has been added on your extensions menu

Connecting to a Blockchain on the Cloud

Configuration

Before you can connect to your IBM Cloud Blockchain, you will need the following

Connection Profile
Certificate
Private Key

Connection Profile

From your IBM Blockchain Dashboard navigate to Overview > Connection > Download to download your Connection Profile json file

Certificate and Private Key

From the IBM Blockchain Dashboard navigate to Certificate Authority > Generate Certificate (Admin)

Copy the Certificate into a text file, and do the same for the Private Key. Be sure to store these in a secure place and to not expose them publicly

Add Your Certificate

Next add your certificate by navigating to Members > Certificates > Add Certificate and enter a Name for your certificate and your Certificate that was generated previously and Submit, then click on Restart to restart all your peers

Configure the Extension

Now click on the IBM Blockchain extension on your extensions panel, and in the panel hover beside the Blockchain Connections and click the + button. You will then be directed to give a name to the connection and select your Connection Profile, Certificate and Private Key files that you had previously downloaded/created

Create a Smart Contract

From the VSCode Command Palatte (Can be accessed with Ctrl + Shift + P) search for Create Smart Contract Package and click on the command

You will then be asked to choose a language, I’ll be using Typescript

Then you will need to choose a folder for the project, create a folder called smartcontracts and select that and you can chose to open in new window or add to workspace

The smart contract files will then be generated

To the .gitignore add node_modules if you plan on using git

Install Dependencies

Install dependencies with npm i

Python Versions and Path

If you get a Can't find Python executable "python" error, you can read this page about adding python to your path with Anaconda

You will need to be running Python 2.7, so make sure that you configure your environment to be such. You can add new environments from the Anaconda Navigator. Check your Python version from a new terminal with python --version

You can configure a new Anaconda environment with Python 2.7 (I named mine python2.7) and you can then modify your Python Path to be C:\tools\Anaconda3\envs\python2.7 instead to reference your new environment

If you run into the node-gyp issue, look at the installation instructions on the node-gyp documentation

For more information you can also look at the Node on Windows Guidelines

MSBuild

If you run into the MSBuild version error, let me know how you fixed it otherwise just switch to Ubuntu and start over

Test the build

We can test the build to make sure we don’t have any problems with the current setup

1
npm run build

Run the Tests

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npm run test