Getting Started with Apibara

Apibara is the easiest way to build production-grade indexers:

  • Stream onchain data into your indexer, receiving exactly the data you need.
  • Transform the data into a higher-level representation that maps to your application domain.
  • Integrate data with the rest of your application by sending it to other services.
                                Transform
┌──────────────┐             ┌──────────────┐              ┌──────────────┐
│              │░            │              │░             │              │░
│     DNA      │░  Stream    │   Indexer    │░ Integrate   │    Target    │░
│    Server    │────────────▶│    Script    │─────────────▶│ Integration  │░
│              │░            │              │░             │              │░
└──────────────┘░            └──────────────┘░             └──────────────┘░
 ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░             ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░              ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░

This page will guide you in setting up your development environment for Apibara and writing your first indexer.

Install the CLI tool

Install the apibara CLI by running the following command. Note that you need jq install for this to work. Alternatively, you can download the CLI from our release page and manually add it to your $PATH.

Terminal
curl -sL https://install.apibara.com | bash

After this, create a new terminal and check that apibara is installed:

Terminal
apibara --version
apibara-cli 0.4.0

If the command above prints apibara: command not found it means that the Apibara directory is not in $PATH. To fix it, make sure that the Apibara directory is in $PATH, the directory is system-dependent and is printed during the installation phase.

Managing plugins

Apibara doesn't include any integration out of the box. Integrations are a special type of plugin and are managed using the CLI.

List the installed plugins using the following command. Note that, as expected, no plugin is installed.

Terminal
apibara plugins list

We use the apibara plugins install command to download and install plugins from GitHub.

For this tutorial, we install the "console" plugin since it requires no external dependency or service.

Terminal
apibara plugins install sink-console
Found release Console Sink v0.1.0
Downloading sink-console-x86_64-linux.gz...
Plugin console installed to /home/user/.local/share/apibara/plugins/apibara-sink-console

Now we can list the plugins again to check that the plugin was installed correctly.

Terminal
apibara plugins list
╭─────────┬──────┬─────────╮
│ NAME    │ KIND │ VERSION │
├─────────┼──────┼─────────┤
│ console │ sink │ 0.4.1   │
╰─────────┴──────┴─────────╯

Creating an Apibara account and API Key

Head over to the registration page to create an Apibara account.

Registration page

From your dashboard, click on the "New Indexer" button and then select "DNA Key". Choose a memorable name for your API Key and then click "Deploy Indexer".

Create API Key

Finally, copy the API Key to your clipboard. Notice that you can come back to this page at any time from your dashboard.

Copy API Key

As we will see in the next section, you will need the API Key to authenticate with the data streams hosted by Apibara.

Your first indexer

Indexers are implemented as Javascript or Typescript scripts. Scripts need to export at least two things:

  • a config object that contains the indexer configuration.
  • a default function, used to transform each batch of data streamed by Apibara.

A minimal script looks like the following:

script.js
export const config = {
  streamUrl: "https://sepolia.starknet.a5a.ch",
  startingBlock: 10_000,
  network: "starknet",
  finality: "DATA_STATUS_ACCEPTED",
  filter: {
    header: {},
  },
  sinkType: "console",
  sinkOptions: {},
};

// This transform does nothing.
export default function transform(block) {
  return block;
}

You can run it using the apibara run command. Notice that you need a free API key from Apibara to consume the hosted stream.

Terminal
apibara run script.js -A  dna_xxx

The indexer script is a self-contained script that is used by Apibara to configure and transform the data stream. If you try to run the script directly using, for example, Node.js or Bun it will not do anything.

Next steps

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Apibara is the fastest platform to build production-grade indexers that connect onchain data to web2 services.

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