Aries Cloud Agent - Python Plugin for Aries Toolbox

Quickstart Guide - Docker demo

Included in this repository are two Docker Compose files that can be used to quickly experiment with the ACA-Py toolbox plugin and the Aries Toolbox. One provides a single agent and the other two agents. In both cases, the resulting agents are fully prepared to interact with other agents and the Sovrin Staging Net for Verifiable Credentials exchange.

Requirements:

• Docker
• Docker Compose

Disclaimer regarding the use of ngrok

Both compose setups use the ngrok tunneling service to make your agent available to the outside world. One caveat of this, however, is that connections made from your docker agent will expire within 8 hours as a limitation of the ngrok free-tier. Therefore, these setups are intended for demonstration purposes only and should not be relied upon as is for production environments.

One Agent demo

To start the single agent demo:

$ docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml up --build

This will start two containers, one for the ngrok tunnel and one for the agent. The agent container will wait until the ngrok endpoint is available before starting up. The agent container will emit a fair amount of logs, including Node is not a validator errors that can be safely ignored. At the end of starting up it will print an invitation to the screen that can then be pasted into the toolbox to connect to and remotely administer your docker agent.

Two Agent demo

To start up an Alice and Bob demo:

$ docker-compose -f docker-compose_alice_bob.yml up --build

This will start four containers, two ngrok tunnels and two agent containers. Two invitations will be printed to the screen corresponding to Alice and Bob. Pasting these invitations into the toolbox will result in "Alice (Admin)" and "Bob (Admin)" connections. Using the toolbox, you can then cause these two agents to interact with each other in various ways.

Quickstart Guide - Running locally

Requirements:

• Python 3.6 or higher
• ACA-Py @ master

Note: This plugin is currently compatible only with the master branch of ACA-Py. Once a release including the new plugin interface is published to PyPI, these instructions will be updated accordingly.

TODO: Add instructions for payment plugin loading

Setup Aries Cloud Agent - Python

If you already have an existing installation of ACA-Py, you can skip these steps and move on to plugin installation. It is also worth noting that this is not the only way to setup an ACA-Py instance. For more setup configurations, see the Aries Cloud Agent - Python repository.

First, clone ACA-Py and prepare a virtual environment:

$ git clone https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-cloudagent-python
$ cd aries-cloudagent-python
$ python3 -m venv env
$ source env/bin/activate

Install ACA-Py into the virtual environment:

$ pip install -e .

Or include the indy feature if you want to use Indy ledgers or wallets:

$ pip install -e .[indy]

Plugin Installation

Install this plugin into the virtual environment:

$ pip install git+https://github.com/hyperledger/aries-acapy-plugin-toolbox.git@master#egg=acapy-plugin-toolbox

Plugin Loading

Start up ACA-Py with the plugin parameter:

$ aca-py start \
	-it http localhost 3000 -it ws localhost 3001 \
	-ot http \
	-e http://localhost:3000 ws://localhost:3001 \
	--plugin acapy_plugin_toolbox

Passing the whole package acapy_plugin_toolbox will load all protocol handlers. Individual modules and groups are also separately loadable.

Available modules include:

• connections: Handlers for the admin-connections protocol.
• static_connections: Handlers for the admin-static-connections protocol.
• schema: Handlers for the admin-schemas protocol.
• credential_definitions: Handlers for the admin-credential-definitions protocol.
• dids: Handlers for the admin-dids protocol.
• holder: Handlers for the admin-holder protocol.
• issuer: Handlers for the admin-issuer protocol.
• basicmessage: Handlers for the admin_basicmessage protocol.

Note: Links to documentation for each of the above protocols will be added when they become available.

Available groups include:

• all: The default group loaded by the package, loading all handlers.
• connections: Handlers from connections and static_connections.
• holder: Handlers from credential_definitions and holder.
• issuance: Handlers from schema, credential_definitions, did, and issuer.

Example

To load the "connections" group and the "basicmessage" module:

$ aca-py start \
	-it http localhost 3000 -it ws localhost 3001 \
	-ot http \
	-e http://localhost:3000 ws://localhost:3001 \
	--plugin acapy_plugin_toolbox.group.connections
	--plugin acapy_plugin_toolbox.basicmessage

Generating an invitation for use with the Toolbox

By default, ACA-Py has no preexisting connections. To have our agent interact with other agents, we use the Aries Toolbox which is itself a simplified kind of agent. We need ACA-Py to emit an invitation for the toolbox to begin the connection process and bootstrap other interactions. To create an invitation that can then be loaded into the Aries Toolbox:

$ aca-py start \
	-it http localhost 3000 -it ws localhost 3001 \
	-ot http \
	-e http://localhost:3000 ws://localhost:3001 \
	--plugin acapy_plugin_toolbox \
	--invite --invite-label "My agent admin connection" --invite-role admin

The invitation will be printed to the screen after the agent has started up and can then be pasted into the toolbox.

Connection Roles

This plugin takes advantage of the concept of "roles" as built in to Aries Cloud Agent - Python. Currently, this is a simple string stored along with other connection details. In order to access the "admin" protocols, the originating connection of the message must have a role of "admin." In the example above and in the docker demos, --invite is used to generate an invitation at startup and --invite-role admin causes the connection resulting from that invitation to have the role of admin. Using the toolbox, you can create more invitations with the "admin" role and use these invitations on other devices or given to others with administrative privileges on your agent.

Indy Startup Example

To use all the features of the toolbox, you'll need the indy feature installed and a start up command similar to the following (with environment variables replaced with your appropriate values or available in the environment):

$ aca-py start \
	-it http localhost 3000 -it ws localhost 3001 \
	-ot http \
    -e $ENDPOINT ${ENDPOINT/http/ws} \
    --label $AGENT_NAME \
    --auto-accept-requests --auto-ping-connection \
    --auto-respond-credential-proposal --auto-respond-credential-offer --auto-respond-credential-request --auto-store-credential \
    --auto-respond-presentation-proposal --auto-respond-presentation-request --auto-verify-presentation \
    --invite --invite-role admin --invite-label "$AGENT_NAME (admin)" \
    --genesis-url https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sovrin-foundation/sovrin/master/sovrin/pool_transactions_sandbox_genesis \
    --wallet-type indy \
    --plugin acapy_plugin_toolbox

Combined HTTP+WS Transport

This plugin also includes a side-loadable combined HTTP and WebSocket transport that enables accepting both HTTP and WebSocket connections on the same port. This is useful for running the agent behind a tunneling service such as ngrok that generally provides only one port-to-port tunnel at a time.

To use the HTTP+WS transport:

$ aca-py start \
	-it acapy_plugin_toolbox.http_ws localhost 3000 \
	-ot http \
	-e http://localhost:3000 ws://localhost:3000

Note that you do not need to load any other plugins for this transport but you can by specifying --plugin as shown in the examples above.