Node Setup & Identifiers

This guide covers setting up an agent and creating identifiers in Node.

Prerequisites

You need to have Node v12 or later installed. In this example, we use yarn as the package manager, but you can also use npm.

Start by creating a directory for our project and initializing the npm package.

mkdir veramo-agent && cd veramo-agent
yarn init -y

Install dev dependencies

yarn add typescript ts-node --dev

Install Veramo core and plugins

yarn add @veramo/core @veramo/credential-w3c @veramo/data-store @veramo/did-manager @veramo/did-provider-ethr @veramo/did-provider-web @veramo/did-resolver @veramo/key-manager @veramo/kms-local ethr-did-resolver web-did-resolver

Install sqlite

yarn add sqlite3

Add a tsconfig.json to your project

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "preserveConstEnums": true,
    "strict": true,
    "target": "es6",
    "rootDir": "./",
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "downlevelIteration": true
  }
}

Bootstrap Veramo

We bootstrap Veramo by creating a setup file and initializing the agent. Create a setup file in src/veramo/setup.ts and import the following dependencies:

// Core interfaces
import { createAgent, IDIDManager, IResolver, IDataStore, IKeyManager } from '@veramo/core'

// Core identity manager plugin
import { DIDManager } from '@veramo/did-manager'

// Ethr did identity provider
import { EthrDIDProvider } from '@veramo/did-provider-ethr'

// Web did identity provider
import { WebDIDProvider } from '@veramo/did-provider-web'

// Core key manager plugin
import { KeyManager } from '@veramo/key-manager'

// Custom key management system for RN
import { KeyManagementSystem } from '@veramo/kms-local'

// Custom resolvers
import { DIDResolverPlugin } from '@veramo/did-resolver'
import { Resolver } from 'did-resolver'
import { getResolver as ethrDidResolver } from 'ethr-did-resolver'
import { getResolver as webDidResolver } from 'web-did-resolver'

// Storage plugin using TypeOrm
import { Entities, KeyStore, DIDStore, IDataStoreORM } from '@veramo/data-store'

// TypeORM is installed with `@veramo/data-store`
import { createConnection } from 'typeorm'

Create some variables that we will use later

// This will be the name for the local sqlite database for demo purposes
const DATABASE_FILE = 'database.sqlite'

// You will need to get a project ID from infura https://www.infura.io
const INFURA_PROJECT_ID = '<your PROJECT_ID here>'

Initialise a database using TypeORM

const dbConnection = createConnection({
  type: 'sqlite',
  database: DATABASE_FILE,
  synchronize: true,
  logging: ['error', 'info', 'warn'],
  entities: Entities,
})

Create the agent by using the createAgent method from @veramo/core

export const agent = createAgent<IDIDManager & IKeyManager & IDataStore & IDataStoreORM & IResolver>({
  plugins: [
    new KeyManager({
      store: new KeyStore(dbConnection),
      kms: {
        local: new KeyManagementSystem(),
      },
    }),
    new DIDManager({
      store: new DIDStore(dbConnection),
      defaultProvider: 'did:ethr:rinkeby',
      providers: {
        'did:ethr:rinkeby': new EthrDIDProvider({
          defaultKms: 'local',
          network: 'rinkeby',
          rpcUrl: 'https://rinkeby.infura.io/v3/' + INFURA_PROJECT_ID,
        }),
        'did:web': new WebDIDProvider({
          defaultKms: 'local',
        }),
      },
    }),
    new DIDResolverPlugin({
      resolver: new Resolver({
        ...ethrDidResolver({ infuraProjectId: INFURA_PROJECT_ID })
        ...webDidResolver(),
      }),
    }),
  ],
})

Note:
The types you specify for agent creation are optional, but may be very helpful when writing TypeScript, as long as they match the plugins that you add to the agent.
<IDIDManager & IKeyManager & IDataStore & IDataStoreORM & IResolver>
These types help the typescript compiler to figure out what plugin methods get exposed by the agent and what parameters those methods require. These types are also very helpful for development in VSCode, or other IDEs that provide auto-complete.

That's one possible agent setup. Let's use it to create and list identifiers.

App Logic

Create 2 files ./src/create-identifier.ts and ./src/list-identifiers.ts

Add the following code to ./src/list-identifiers.ts

import { agent } from './veramo/setup'

async function main() {
  const identifiers = await agent.didManagerFind()

  console.log(`There are ${identifiers.length} identifiers`)

  if (identifiers.length > 0) {
    identifiers.map((id) => {
      console.log(id)
      console.log('..................')
    })
  }
}

main().catch(console.log)

Add the following code to ./src/create-identifier.ts

import { agent } from './veramo/setup'

async function main() {
  const identity = await agent.didManagerCreate()
  console.log(`New identity created`)
  console.log(identity)
}

main().catch(console.log)

To run those functions add the following script commands to package.json

{
  "scripts": {
    "id:list": "ts-node ./src/list-identifiers",
    "id:create": "ts-node ./src/create-identifier"
  }
}

List Identifiers

yarn id:list

Expected output

$ ts-node ./src/list-identifiers
Please provide SecretBox to the KeyStore
There are 0 identifiers

Create Identifier

yarn id:create

Expected output

$ ts-node ./src/create-identifier
Please provide SecretBox to the KeyStore
New identity created
{ did:
   'did:ethr:rinkeby:0x6acf3bb1ef0ee84559de2bc2bd9d91532062a730',
  controllerKeyId:
   '04f3f9457f21af89ce4209f0c8c07f04cb14b3420e5a598b96c564127f693687f6273ed52896c91d59b443f260a34e37742f8f35a1a6beafa08ccbc66df363bd44',
  keys:
   [ { type: 'Secp256k1',
       kid:
        '04f3f9457f21af89ce4209f0c8c07f04cb14b3420e5a598b96c564127f693687f6273ed52896c91d59b443f260a34e37742f8f35a1a6beafa08ccbc66df363bd44',
       publicKeyHex:
        '04f3f9457f21af89ce4209f0c8c07f04cb14b3420e5a598b96c564127f693687f6273ed52896c91d59b443f260a34e37742f8f35a1a6beafa08ccbc66df363bd44',
       kms: 'local' } ],
  services: [],
  provider: 'did:ethr:rinkeby' }

Congrats, You have set up the agent and created identifiers!

Prerequisites#

Bootstrap Veramo#

App Logic#

List Identifiers#

Create Identifier#

Prerequisites

Bootstrap Veramo

App Logic

List Identifiers

Create Identifier