Rubychain

Rubychain is a very simple implementation of a blockchain for education purposes. It is heavily inspired by the python version which can be found here: https://dev.to/aunyks/lets-build-the-tiniest-blockchain

There are only 2 classes which are /lib/rubychain/chain and /lib/rubychain/block

Rubychain::Chain for creating, updating and exploring the blockchain

Rubychain::Block for creating each individual block

Check out the instructions below or the specs to see how it all works

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'rubychain'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install rubychain

Usage

require 'rubychain'

Rubychain::Chain

Available methods

add_next_block(prev_block, data) => Adds a new block to the blockchain with the given data and previous block

genesis_block => Returns the Genesis block

last_block => Returns the last block that was added to the blockchain

find_block(hash) => Returns a block from the blockchain with the given hash

blockchain => Returns the whole blockchain as an array

Exploring the blockchain

Initialize a new blockchain with a genesis block:

rc = Rubychain::Chain.new

rc.add_next_block(rc.last_block, "some data") => creates a new block with given data and previous block

rc.genesis_block => returns the genesis block

rc.last_block => returns the last block on the blockchain

rc.find_block(hash) => return the block with the given hash

rc.blockchain => [genesis_block, block2] => Returns the whole blockchain as an array

Rubychain::Block

Available methods

index => returns the blocks index

timestamp => returns the blocks timestamp

data => returns the blocks data

prev_hash => returns the previous blocks hash

hash => returns a SHA256 hash representation of all the items in the block

Exploring a block

myblock = rc.last_block

or

myblock = rc.find_block(hash)

or directly

myblock = Rubychain::Block.new(1, Time.now, "Hello World", "abc123")

myblock.index => 1

myblock.timestamp => Time of creation

myblock.data => "Hello World"

myblock.pre_hash => "abc123"

myblock.hash => sha.hexdigest of index, timestamp, data and previous block hash

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/[USERNAME]/rubychain.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.