In our introduction post, we mentioned working on an extensive C# library for Hive API interactions.
We are pleased to announce the first prototype of BeeSharp today!
Why C#
C# (and .Net itself, to be fair) support various applications.
Examples contain, but are not limited to:
- ASP.NET web applications
- Desktop applications
- Unity simulations and games
- Serverside worker applications
- Android-/IOS-Apps using Xamarin
So C# allows a developer to target a wide range of platforms and user groups, making it an ideal Hive integration target.
Basic design decisions
One of the limiting factors on Hive is, at least according to one of our developers, the lack of documentation. Interacting with Hive without using common Web-Interfaces (PeakD, hive.blog, etc.) or Web-based tools (e.g., Hivesigner, Keychain) is still quite challenging.
This cannot be attributed to the lack of supported programming languages, quite the contrary, but often due to libraries that are complex to use and interfaces that are only partially documented or are heavily outdated.
Since our goal for BeeSharp is to allow professional users to interact with Hive easily, a "bridge" needs to be built that already contains all the information required, even for advanced Hive usage.
BeeSharp also needs to be easily understood and open-source since its usage for blockchain content creation interactions (interactions that require the user private key to create a signature, to be more precise) must be evident to the user to mitigate trust issues when entering said key into the application.
This also requires extensive documentation of said code part and writing down design decisions made so that the community can trace and verify or improve them.
So, to summarize, BeeSharp needs to be:
- easily readable and well documented
- built using transparent design choices and open-source
- extendible for own application development
- include all components necessary to interact with Hive
And this is, of course, only the base line.
Current features
BeeSharp is currently in the Alpha stage. This means that while functional, certain core features (like a complete, stable serialization of all valuable API content creation interactions) are still lacking.
For more information on current features, head over to the repository page linked below.
But there are a few remarks when using BeeSharp at its current stage:
- All blockchain interaction models were built based on documentation (if available) or chain traffic that occured within the last few months. There is no guarantee for completeness nor any likelihood of it at the current stage.
- The signature creation process is still under ongoing development. DO NOT USE IN PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENTS!
Why release an alpha version?
Since BeeSharp is not complete yet, why release an alpha version?
Even though BeeSharp is not complete, we already want to allow developers to see what BeeSharp is going to be about and enable the community to test out existing features.
Furthermore, this project (as any open-source project) requires an active community that participates on future changes, proposes ideas, and reviews existing code for its usability and critical features.
In blockchain environments, you cannot build solely on code, but also on people and trust. We hope that you enjoy experimenting with BeeSharp and give it a try!
Sounds cool, but how does it actually work and where do I get it?
We're glad you asked!
BeeSharp is now available on GitHub, licenced as Apache2 open-source project.
It consists of multiple components and currently two extensions (PeakD, Hive-Engine).
For further questions, check out the documentation in the Wiki, as well as the README-files from all repositories, or ask in this (or any further BeeSharp-related) post.
We hope you enjoy BeeSharp and wish you and your families a great start to 2022 and a happy new year!