Initialization

To understand the initialization process, some background on the underlying libraries are required. For the Schnorrkel sr25519 a WASM library is used. This means that before sr25519 can be used, the WASM libraries needs to be loaded and initialized. This is not an issue when the keyring only uses ed25519.

If you have been through the base keyring documentation, you should be familiar with this process.

Create#

With this in mind, we take care of the initialization before we load our keyring, yielding -

import keyring from '@polkadot/ui-keyring';
import { cryptoWaitReady } from '@polkadot/util-crypto';
cryptoWaitReady().then(() => {
// load all available addresses and accounts
keyring.loadAll({ ss58Format: 42, type: 'sr25519' });
// additional initialization here, including rendering
});

The cryptoWaitReady() promise resolves as soon as the underlying WASM libraries have been made available. This is followed by keyring.loadAll(...) which is the main initialization for the keyring, which

  • initializes the underlying @polkadot/keyring
  • loads all available accounts, addresses band contracts previously stored
  • sets up the default address format with 42 (This is the substrate development default. When not specified, this defaults to 42)
  • defaults to sr25519 accounts (We can still add ed25519 accounts, more on this later. When not specified this defaults to sr25519)

Since you would generally want the keyring available before rendering the UI (although it can be done elsewhere, showing some info while loading), the following pattern is used in our examples, both React and Vue shown here -

...
cryptoWaitReady().then(() => {
keyring.loadAll({ ... });
// mount React and render
ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById('app'));
});
...
cryptoWaitReady().then(() => {
keyring.loadAll({ ... });
// mount Vue and render
new Vue({ render: (h) => h(App) }).$mount('#app');
});

Using with the API#

When using the keyring together with the Polkadot-js API, the above would be adapted since the API itself already has a check for the WASM availability. In this case, we can adapt the interface to follow the following pattern -

import { ApiPromise } from '@polkadot/api';
import keyring from '@polkadot/ui-keyring';
...
ApiPromise.create({ ... }).then(() => {
keyring.loadAll({ ... });
// additional initialization here, including rendering
});

The above pattern is how initialization is done in some applications such as the polkadot-js apps UI.

Additional create options#

In addition to the ss58Format and type options (both optional), the following additional configuration options are available to the loadAll(...) call -

  • filter?: (json: KeyringJson) => boolean - An optional filter that is executed on account loading. This allows us to check the loaded account and apply rules on it before including it in the keyring. Generally this would be used for advanced cases, any account that is filtered with false won't appear.

  • genesisHash?: Hash - The genesisHash of accounts to should be loaded. The meta property of the account may contain a genesisHash, when both are available and non-matching, the account will not be included. To populate this option, the easiest way is to pass the api.genesisHash property.

  • isDevelopment?: boolean - This flag, when set to true loads the keyring in development mode. This means that the default development accounts such as "Alice", "Bob", ..., "Ferdie" are included in the keyring. Generally you would only specify this when actually connected to a development chain.

  • store?: KeyringStore - An optional store to be used. By default the ui-keyring will user browser localStorage, but with a specific store this behavior can be adjusted. For instance, for an extension we would default to the extension store (although localStorage is available) and for Electron apps, we may want to default to file storage.

// For file storage where available, e.g. in Electron environments.
// This takes an path in the constructor, new FileStore('~./keyring-data')
// import { FileStore } from '@polkadot/ui-keyring/stores';
// When the store is not specified, it defaults to new BrowserStore()
// import { BrowserStore } from '@polkadot/ui-keyring/stores';
...
// ExensionStore is available in https://github.com/polkadot-js/extension
keyring.loadAll({ store: new ExtensionStore(), ... });

Managing accounts#

With the keyring installed and ready for use, next we will dive into adding and managing accounts.

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