Blockchain development made easy with the IBM Blockchain Platform Extension for VS Code

Over the past 9 months we have been developing an open source extension for VS Code to make it simpler and quicker to develop Blockchain applications for the IBM Blockchain Platform. May 9th saw the v1.0.0 release of the extension in the VS Code Marketplace.

If you are new to IBM Blockchain Platform or Hyperledger Fabric follow our tutorials on how to get started locally, then how to setup and submit transactions to a Blockchain network deployed to IBM Cloud.

What can you do with extension? Firstly it allows you to create skeleton smart contract projects. You can choose between JavaScript, TypeScript, Go and Java for the smart contract language. The skeleton smart contract project is based around an asset type of your choosing and contains examples of CRUD operations. You can create a project that manages whatever type of asset you like from cars, to houses and even penguins. You even get some skeleton unit tests that you can update to test your smart contract transactions.

The extension manages a local Hyperledger Fabric network. At just the click of a button you can start, stop and tear down a one org, one peer, and one channel network. This can be used to deploy and interact with your newly created smart contract.

Having problems with a transaction function? Using VS Code’s debug tools you can debug your smart contract and set break points so you can step through the transaction code.

Already have IBM Blockchain Platform instance or another Hyperledger Fabric network? You can connect to this from within VS Code with just a connection profile and an identity. You can then easily submit transactions to create, read, update and delete cars, houses, penguins or whatever asset you decided to create; and generate functional tests so that you can test out your transactions against a real network.

So whats next? We will continue to do regular releases usually every two weeks. If you want to find out what features we are working on see our milestones on our GitHub page.

Want to get involved? We would love your feedback on the extension and would gladly accept pull requests for new features or bug fixes.

Thanks to all those that have contributed to or tested the extension, we couldn’t have got this far without you. Particular thanks to the designers Ed and Sim and the developers Heather, Jake, Rieha, Sam, and Simon