documentation

neo-local

Personal private blockchain for NEO dApp development!

Table of contents

• Quick start
• What's included
• Usage
• Customizing
• Tricks and tweaks
• Bugs and feature requests
• license

Quick start

Fast and easy to start from the ground:

• Install docker and docker-compose for your platform:
  • Linux Docker - docker-compose
  • Mac Docker and docker-compose
  • Windows Docker and docker-compose
• Download the latest version of neo-local
  • or clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/CityOfZion/neo-local.git
• Move to the folder neo-local
• Start all with the command make start on linux/Mac and docker-compose up on Windows
• Wait some seconds and you will have neo-python prompt available
• You can also start your browser and go to neo-local-faucet and claim some NEO and GAS to a wallet

That will make a private NEO blockchain just for you to develop your dApp or smart-contract

To stop neo-local, exit from neo-python prompt and do the following command (Linux/Mac):

make stop

or on Windows

docker-compose down

What's included

Within the neo-local you'll find the following services:

• neo-local-faucet (dev faucet)
• neo-cli (block producer node)
• neo-python (development CLI)
• (block explorer)
• neo-scan-sync (block explorer)
• postgres (database for neo-scan)

Usage

After running neo-local (see Quick start) you will land in the neo-python prompt.
Block producer node is available on localhost port 20333.
Or by RPC on localhost port 30333.

There are also two folders shared with the neo-python running container. Everything you put there is available to be used inside the container.

neo-local/
├── wallets/
├── smart-contracts/

Customizing

Only one neo-cli node is started as block producer. The version of that node can be customized by you. You should check what versions are supported. That information is shown in a commented line inside the ".env" file.

To change the default version you just need to edit the ".env" file

neo-local/
├── .env

and change the variables above

# neo-cli version
# Other supported versions: 2.10.2
NODE1_NEO_CLI_VERSION=2.10.2

Tricks and tweaks

Monitoring your nodes

If you want to monitor your node, you can use this little script that makes two RPC calls querying the version of the node and the blockcount. It will keep looping and showing you the results in a table.

neo-local/
├── privnet/
│   ├── watch_nodes_sync.sh

Run it like this

./privnet/watch_nodes_sync.sh

Changing a NEO node version while blockchain is running

And if you want to change a consensus node version when all is already running?
Well, you can do that without disrupting your blockchain in a snap of time.
To make that happen you need to run a script inside the privnet folder:

neo-local/
├── privnet/
│   ├── change_neo-cli_node_version.sh

The script accepts 2 arguments:

• The first argument is the name of the node container.
  Example: neo-cli-privatenet-1

• The second argument is the version of the neo-cli desired to be installed

This is a possible example:

./privnet/change_neo-cli_node_version.sh neo-cli-privatenet-1 2.10.2

Note: This works for upgrading or downgrading the version.

Bootstrap a genesis clean chain

Sometimes is good to start fresh from the genesis block.
You can do that changing the variables on the .env file

neo-local/
├── .env

Inside that file you have a variable called BOOTSTRAP.
There are two possible values:

• _genesis means starting from block zero
• _1600kBlocks starts with 1600 blocks (default)

Note: A genesis chain doesn't have GAS claimed yet. You will need GAS to deploy smart-contracts.

Bugs and feature requests

Have a bug or a feature request? Please first read the issue guidelines and search for existing and closed issues. If your problem or idea is not addressed yet, please open a new issue.

License

• Open-source MIT