Writing a contract using clauses¶

What are clauses and why to use them?¶

Clauses are essentially micro-contracts which contain independent verification logic, and can be logically composed together to form a contract. Clauses are designed to enable re-use of common verification parts, for example issuing state objects is generally the same for all fungible contracts, so a common issuance clause can be inherited for each contract’s issue clause. This cuts down on scope for error, and improves consistency of behaviour. By splitting verification logic into smaller chunks, they can also be readily tested in isolation.

How clauses work?¶

We have different types of clauses, the most basic are the ones that define verification logic for particular command set. We will see them later as elementary building blocks that commercial paper consist of - Move, Issue and Redeem. As a developer you need to identify reusable parts of your contract and decide how they should be combined. It is where composite clauses become useful. They gather many clause subcomponents and resolve how and which of them should be checked.

For example, assume that we want to verify a transaction using all constraints defined in separate clauses. We need to wrap classes that define them into AllComposition composite clause. It assures that all clauses from that combination match with commands in a transaction - only then verification logic can be executed. It may be a little confusing, but composite clause is also a clause and you can even wrap it in the special grouping clause. In CommercialPaper it looks like that:

The most basic types of composite clauses are AllComposition, AnyComposition and FirstComposition. In this tutorial we will use GroupClauseVerifier and AnyComposition. It’s important to understand how they work. Charts showing execution and more detailed information can be found in Clauses.

Commercial paper class¶

We start from defining CommercialPaper class. As in previous tutorial we need some elementary parts: Commands interface, generateMove, generateIssue, generateRedeem - so far so good that stays the same. The new part is verification and Clauses interface (you will see them later in code). Let’s start from the basic structure:

class CommercialPaper : Contract {
    override val legalContractReference: SecureHash = SecureHash.sha256("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_paper")

    override fun verify(tx: TransactionForContract) = verifyClause(tx, Clauses.Group(), tx.commands.select<Commands>())

    interface Commands : CommandData {
        data class Move(override val contractHash: SecureHash? = null) : FungibleAsset.Commands.Move, Commands
        class Redeem : TypeOnlyCommandData(), Commands
        data class Issue(override val nonce: Long = random63BitValue()) : IssueCommand, Commands
    }

public class CommercialPaper implements Contract {
    @Override
    public SecureHash getLegalContractReference() {
        return SecureHash.Companion.sha256("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_paper");
    }

    @Override
    public void verify(@NotNull TransactionForContract tx) throws IllegalArgumentException {
        ClauseVerifier.verifyClause(tx, new Clauses.Group(), extractCommands(tx));
    }

  public interface Commands extends CommandData {
      class Move implements Commands {
          @Override
          public boolean equals(Object obj) { return obj instanceof Move; }
      }

      class Redeem implements Commands {
          @Override
          public boolean equals(Object obj) { return obj instanceof Redeem; }
      }

      class Issue implements Commands {
          @Override
          public boolean equals(Object obj) { return obj instanceof Issue; }
      }
  }

As you can see we used verifyClause function with Clauses.Group() in place of previous verification. It’s an entry point to running clause logic. verifyClause takes the transaction, a clause (usually a composite one) to verify, and a collection of commands the clause is expected to handle all of. This list of commands is important because verifyClause checks that none of the commands are left unprocessed at the end, and raises an error if they are.

Simple Clauses¶

Let’s move to constructing contract logic in terms of clauses language. Commercial paper contract has three commands and three corresponding behaviours: Issue, Move and Redeem. Each of them has a specific set of requirements that must be satisfied - perfect material for defining clauses. For brevity we will show only Move clause, rest is constructed in similar manner and included in the CommercialPaper.kt code.

interface Clauses {
    class Move: Clause<State, Commands, Issued<Terms>>() {
        override val requiredCommands: Set<Class<out CommandData>>
            get() = setOf(Commands.Move::class.java)

        override fun verify(tx: TransactionForContract,
                        inputs: List<State>,
                        outputs: List<State>,
                        commands: List<AuthenticatedObject<Commands>>,
                        groupingKey: Issued<Terms>?): Set<Commands> {
            val command = commands.requireSingleCommand<Commands.Move>()
            val input = inputs.single()
            requireThat {
                "the transaction is signed by the owner of the CP" by (input.owner in command.signers)
                "the state is propagated" by (outputs.size == 1)
                // Don't need to check anything else, as if outputs.size == 1 then the output is equal to
                // the input ignoring the owner field due to the grouping.
            }
            return setOf(command.value)
        }
    }
    ...

public interface Clauses {
    class Move extends Clause<State, Commands, State> {
        @NotNull
        @Override
        public Set<Class<? extends CommandData>> getRequiredCommands() {
            return Collections.singleton(Commands.Move.class);
        }

        @NotNull
        @Override
        public Set<Commands> verify(@NotNull TransactionForContract tx,
                                       @NotNull List<? extends State> inputs,
                                       @NotNull List<? extends State> outputs,
                                       @NotNull List<? extends AuthenticatedObject<? extends Commands>> commands,
                                       @NotNull State groupingKey) {
            AuthenticatedObject<Commands.Move> cmd = requireSingleCommand(tx.getCommands(), Commands.Move.class);
            // There should be only a single input due to aggregation above
            State input = single(inputs);

            if (!cmd.getSigners().contains(input.getOwner()))
                throw new IllegalStateException("Failed requirement: the transaction is signed by the owner of the CP");

            // Check the output CP state is the same as the input state, ignoring the owner field.
            if (outputs.size() != 1) {
                throw new IllegalStateException("the state is propagated");
            }
            // Don't need to check anything else, as if outputs.size == 1 then the output is equal to
            // the input ignoring the owner field due to the grouping.
            return Collections.singleton(cmd.getValue());
        }
    }
    ...

We took part of code for Command.Move verification from previous tutorial and put it into the verify function of Move class. Notice that this class must extend the Clause abstract class, which defines the verify function, and the requiredCommands property used to determine the conditions under which a clause is triggered. In the above example it means that the clause will run verification when the Commands.Move is present in a transaction.

Few important changes:

• verify function returns the set of commands which it has processed. Normally this returned set is identical to the requiredCommands used to trigger the clause, however in some cases the clause may process further optional commands which it needs to report that it has handled.
• Verification takes new parameters. Usually inputs and outputs are some subset of the original transaction entries passed to the clause by outer composite or grouping clause. groupingKey is a key used to group original states.

As a simple example imagine input states:

1. 1000 GBP issued by Bank of England
2. 500 GBP issued by Bank of England
3. 1000 GBP issued by Bank of Scotland

We will group states by Issuer so in the first group we have inputs 1 and 2, in second group input number 3. Grouping keys are: ‘GBP issued by Bank of England’ and ‘GBP issued by Bank of Scotland’.

How the states can be grouped and passed in that form to the Move clause? That leads us to the concept of GroupClauseVerifier.

Group clause¶

We may have a transaction with similar but unrelated state evolutions which need to be validated independently. It makes sense to check Move command on groups of related inputs and outputs (see example above). Thus, we need to collect relevant states together. For this we extend the standard GroupClauseVerifier and specify how to group input/output states, as well as the top-level clause to run on each group. In our example a top-level is a composite clause - AnyCompostion that delegates verification to it’s subclasses (wrapped move, issue, redeem). Any in this case means that it will take 0 or more clauses that match transaction commands.

class Group : GroupClauseVerifier<State, Commands, Issued<Terms>>(
    AnyComposition(
        Redeem(),
        Move(),
        Issue())) {
    override fun groupStates(tx: TransactionForContract): List<TransactionForContract.InOutGroup<State, Issued<Terms>>>
            = tx.groupStates<State, Issued<Terms>> { it.token }
}

class Group extends GroupClauseVerifier<State, Commands, State> {
    public Group() {
        super(new AnyComposition<>(
            new Clauses.Redeem(),
            new Clauses.Move(),
            new Clauses.Issue()
        ));
    }

    @NotNull
    @Override
    public List<InOutGroup<State, State>> groupStates(@NotNull TransactionForContract tx) {
        return tx.groupStates(State.class, State::withoutOwner);
    }
}

For the CommercialPaper contract, Group is the main clause for the contract, and is passed directly into verifyClause (see the example code at the top of this tutorial). We used groupStates function here, it’s worth reminding how it works: Using state groups.

Summary¶

In summary the top level contract CommercialPaper specifies a single grouping clause of type CommercialPaper.Clauses.Group which in turn specifies GroupClause implementations for each type of command (Redeem, Move and Issue). This reflects the flow of verification: in order to verify a CommercialPaper we first group states, check which commands are specified, and run command-specific verification logic accordingly.

Debugging¶

Debugging clauses which have been composed together can be complicated due to the difficulty in knowing which clauses have been matched, whether specific clauses failed to match or passed verification, etc. There is “trace” level logging code in the clause verifier which evaluates which clauses will be matched and logs them, before actually performing the validation. To enable this, ensure trace level logging is enabled on the Clause interface.