Building a Decentralized Application (DApp) with WeaveDB

3 min readNov 3, 2023

Introduction

In this tutorial, we’ll guide you through the process of creating a decentralized application (DApp) using WeaveDB as the backend database. We’ll provide step-by-step instructions, code examples, and best practices. Please note that we won’t make any assumptions, so this guide is suitable for developers of all levels.

Prerequisites:

Basic knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, and web development.
Node.js and npm (Node Package Manager) installed on your system.

Overview

Step 1: Set Up Your Development Environment

Before you begin, make sure you have Node.js and npm installed on your machine. You can download them from the official website: Node.js Downloads.

Step 2: Create a New Project

We’ll create a simple DApp project from scratch. You can use your preferred code editor (e.g., Visual Studio Code).

Create a new project directory:

mkdir my-weavedb-dapp
cd my-weavedb-dapp

2. Initialize a new Node.js project and follow the prompts:

npm init

You can accept the default values for most prompts. This will create a package.json file.

3. Create an HTML file for your DApp. You can use a basic template like this:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>My WeaveDB DApp</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Welcome to My WeaveDB DApp</h1>
</body>
</html>

Step 3: Setting Up WeaveDB

WeaveDB provides SDKs to interact with its decentralized database. In this tutorial, we’ll use the weavedb-sdk for Node.js.

Install the weavedb-sdk:

npm install weavedb-sdk

This SDK allows you to interact with WeaveDB from your DApp.

Step 4: Initializing WeaveDB

In your JavaScript code, you need to initialize WeaveDB with your configuration.

Create a JavaScript file (e.g., app.js) in your project folder and add the following code:

const { WeaveDB } = require('weavedb-sdk');

const weaveDB = new WeaveDB({
  // Configuration options
});

// Initialize WeaveDB
weaveDB.init()
  .then(() => {
    console.log('WeaveDB initialized.');
  })
  .catch((error) => {
    console.error('Error initializing WeaveDB:', error);
  });

Step 5: Storing Data in WeaveDB

Let’s store some data in WeaveDB. We’ll use a simple key-value pair for this example.

Add the following code to app.js:

// Define your data
const data = {
  key: 'myKey',
  value: 'Hello, WeaveDB!'
};

// Store data in WeaveDB
weaveDB.storeData(data)
  .then((result) => {
    console.log('Data stored successfully:', result);
  })
  .catch((error) => {
    console.error('Error storing data:', error);
  });

Step 6: Retrieving Data from WeaveDB

Now, let’s retrieve the data we stored in WeaveDB.

Add the following code to app.js:

// Retrieve data from WeaveDB
weaveDB.getData(data.key)
  .then((retrievedData) => {
    console.log('Retrieved data:', retrievedData);
  })
  .catch((error) => {
    console.error('Error retrieving data:', error);
  });

Step 7: Running Your DApp

To run your DApp, you can use a build tool like Parcel or Vite. We’ll use Parcel for this example.

Install Parcel as a development dependency:

npm install --save-dev parcel-bundler

2. Add a start script to your package.json:

"scripts": {
  "start": "parcel index.html"
}

3. Create an index.html file in your project directory with the following content:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>My WeaveDB DApp</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Welcome to My WeaveDB DApp</h1>
    <script src="./app.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

4. Start your DApp using Parcel:

npm start

Your DApp should now be running, and it will store and retrieve data using WeaveDB.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You’ve created a simple decentralized application (DApp) using WeaveDB as the backend database. You learned how to set up your development environment, initialize WeaveDB, store and retrieve data, and run your DApp. This tutorial serves as a starting point for more complex and feature-rich DApps in the Web3 ecosystem.

Building a Decentralized Application (DApp) with WeaveDB

Written by Freke Cletus