Custom Indexer Template
Create Aptos Dapp Custom Indexer Dapp Template
The custom indexer template provides a starter dapp with all the necessary infrastructure to build a full stack app with custom indexer support.
The Custom Indexer template provides:
- Folder structure - A pre-made dapp folder structure with
src
for frontend,contract
for Move contract andindexer
for custom indexer. - Dapp infrastructure - All required dependencies a dapp needs to start building on the Aptos network.
- Wallet Info implementation - Pre-made
WalletInfo
components to demonstrate how one can read info from a connected wallet. - Message board functionality - Pre-made
MessageBoard
component to create, update and read messages from the Move smart contract. - Analytics dashboard - A pre-made
Analytics
component to show the number of messages created and updated. - Point program - A minimal example to show you how to define a point program based on events (e.g. create message, update message) and show that on the analytics dashboard, with sorting.
Generate the custom indexer template
On your terminal, navigate to the directory you want to work in and run:
Follow the CLI prompts.
Publish the Move Contract
On the project root folder, run the below command to publish the contract.
This command will:
- Publish the contract to chain.
- Set the
VITE_MODULE_ADDRESS
in the.env
file to set the contract object address.
Create a postgres database
Sign up for Neon postgres (our cloud Postgres provider) and create a new project. Find the connection string in Neon console’s quickstart section (it should look like postgresql://username:password@host/neondb?sslmode=require
) and set it in the .env
file as DATABASE_URL
.
If you want to run the database locally, you can follow this tutorial to run a postgres database in a docker container.
Setup the database
Install Rust.
Install diesel cli to run migrations.
Run all pending database migrations. This will create all the tables in the database.
In case you want to revert all migrations to delete all tables because you want to re-index all data.
In case you want to make any change to the database, you can add a new migration.
Sign up for Aptos Build
Sign up for Aptos Build, create a new project, and get the API token.
Build the indexer as a docker container
In the indexer
folder, make a copy of example.config.yaml
and rename it to config.yaml
. Fill in the following:
starting_version
: The tx version (Aptos concept, similar to block height) from which you want to start indexingpostgres_connection_string
: The connection string of the postgres database. DO NOT include the?sslmode=require
because diesel doesn’t recognize it correctly; instead we handle it in the codecontract_address
: The address of the Move contractauth_token
: Aptos Build API token
Build the docker image targeting linux/amd64
as we will eventually push the image to Artifact Registry and deploy it to Cloud Run, which only supports linux/amd64.
Run the indexer locally
You can run the docker container locally to make sure it works. Mac supports linux/amd64 emulation so you can run the x86 docker image on Mac.
Re-indexing
Do not ever try to backfill the data, as data like user statistics is incremental. If you backfill (e.g. processing same event twice), you will get wrong statistics. So please always revert all migrations and re-index from the first tx your contract deployed.
Revert all migrations, this should stop the indexer by making it panic if indexer is running on the cloud.
Run all migrations again.
Follow the guide below to re-build the indexer docker image and redeploy it to cloud run or run it locally.
Run the frontend
Building the frontend
The boilerplate template utilizes React as the frontend framework and Vite as the development tool, and is styled with Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui.
All dapp components should be added into the components
folder and it is recommended to create a page
folder to hold all future pages in your project.
Writing a Move contract
The boilerplate template comes with a contract
folder that holds all Move smart contract related files. Under the sources
folder you will find a *.move
file with a super basic implementation of a Move module that stores a message and updates it. This is to help you get started with writing your own Smart Contract.
Smart contract and frontend communication
For a frontend to submit a transaction to a smart contract, it needs to call an entry function. The boilerplate provides you with an entry-functions
folder to hold all your dapp entry function requests.
Additionaly, for a frontend to fetch data from a smart contract, it needs to submit a request to a view function. The boilerplate provides you with a view-functions
folder to hold all your dapp view function requests.
Ready for Mainnet
If you started your dapp on testnet, and you are happy with your testing, you will want to get the dapp on mainnet.
To publish the smart contract on mainnet, we need to change some configuration.
Open the .env
file and:
Note: Make sure you have created an existing account on the Aptos
mainnet
- Change the
APP_NETWORK
value tomainnet
- Update the
MODULE_PUBLISHER_ACCOUNT_ADDRESS
to be the existing account address - Update the
MODULE_PUBLISHER_PRIVATE_KEY
to be the existing account private key - Run
npm run move:publish
to publish your move module on Aptos mainnet.
Deploy to a live server
create-aptos-dapp
provides an npm command to easily deploy the static site to Vercel.
At the root of the folder, simply run
Then, follow the prompts. Please refer to Vercel docs to learn more about the Vercel CLI
If you are looking for different services to deploy the static site to, create-aptos-dapp
utilizes Vite as the development tool, so you can follow the Vite deployment guide. In a nutshell, you would need to:
- Run
npm run build
to build a static site - Run
npm run preview
to see how your dapp would look like on a live server - Next, all you need is to deploy your static site to a live server, there are some options for you to choose from and can follow this guide on how to use each