Web3 Internals
Warning
This section of the documentation is for advanced users. You should probably stay away from these APIs if you don’t know what you are doing.
The Web3 library has multiple layers of abstraction between the public api exposed by the web3 object and the backend or node that web3 is connecting to.
Providers are responsible for the actual communication with the blockchain such as sending JSON-RPC requests over HTTP or an IPC socket.
Middleware provide hooks for monitoring and modifying requests and responses to and from the provider.
Managers provide thread safety and primitives to allow for asynchronous usage of web3.
Here are some common things you might want to do with these APIs.
Redirect certain RPC requests to different providers such as sending all read operations to a provider backed by a remote node and all write operations to a local node that you control.
Transparently intercept transactions sent over
eth_sendTransaction
, sign them locally, and then send them througheth_sendRawTransaction
.Modify the response from an RPC request so that it is returned in different format such as converting all integer values to their hexadecimal representation.
Validate the inputs to RPC requests
Request Lifecycle
Each web3 RPC call passes through these layers in the following manner.
*********** ************
| Request | | Response |
*********** ************
| ^
v |
+-----------------------------+
| Manager |
+-----------------------------+
| ^
v |
+-----------------------------+
| Middleware |
+-----------------------------+
| ^
v |
+-----------------------------+
| Provider |
+-----------------------------+
You can visualize this relationship like an onion, with the Provider at the
center. The request originates from the Manager
, outside of the onion, passing
down through each layer of the onion until it reaches the Provider
at the
center. The Provider
then handles the request, producing a response which will
then pass back out from the center of the onion, through each layer until it is
finally returned by the Manager
.
Providers
A provider is responsible for all direct blockchain interactions. In most cases this means interacting with the JSON-RPC server for an ethereum node over HTTP or an IPC socket. There is however nothing which requires providers to be RPC based, allowing for providers designed for testing purposes which use an in-memory EVM to fulfill requests.
Writing your own Provider
Writing your own provider requires implementing two required methods as well as setting the middleware the provider should use.
- BaseProvider.make_request(method, params)
Each provider class must implement this method. This method should return a JSON object with either a
'result'
key in the case of success, or an'error'
key in the case of failure.method
This will be a string representing the JSON-RPC method that is being called such as'eth_sendTransaction'
.params
This will be a list or other iterable of the parameters for the JSON-RPC method being called.
- BaseProvider.is_connected(show_traceback=False)
This function should return
True
orFalse
depending on whether the provider should be considered connected. For example, an IPC socket based provider should returnTrue
if the socket is open andFalse
if the socket is closed.If set to
True
, the optionalshow_traceback
boolean will raise aProviderConnectionError
and provide information on why the provider should not be considered connected.
- BaseProvider.middleware
This should be an iterable of middleware.
You can set a new list of middleware by assigning to provider.middleware
,
with the first middleware that processes the request at the beginning of the list.
Provider Configurations
Request Caching
Important
Familiarize yourself with the validation logic for request caching before
enabling it. Since this feature often requires making additional requests under the
hood to try to guarantee the validity of the data, it may create unnecessary
overhead for your use case. Validation can be turned off by setting the
request_cache_validation_threshold
option to None
, caching all allowed
requests, or configured for adjusting performance to your needs.
Request caching can be configured at the provider level via the following configuration options on the provider instance:
cache_allowed_requests: bool = False
cacheable_requests: Optional[Set[RPCEndpoint]]
request_cache_validation_threshold: Optional[Union[RequestCacheValidationThreshold, int]]
For requests that don’t rely on block data (e.g., eth_chainId
), enabling request
caching by setting the cache_allowed_requests
option to True
will cache all
responses. This is safe to do.
However, for requests that rely on block data (e.g., eth_getBlockByNumber
), it is
not safe to always cache their responses because block data can change - during a
chain reorganization or while finality has not been reached, for example. The
request_cache_validation_threshold
option allows configuring a safe threshold for
caching responses that depend on block data. By default, this option is configured
to internal values deemed “safe” for the chain id you are connected to. If you are
connected to mainnet Ethereum, this value is set to the finalized
block number.
If you are connected to another chain, this value is set to a time interval in seconds,
from the current time, that is deemed “safe” for that chain’s finality mechanism.
It’s important to understand that, in order to perform these validations, extra requests are sometimes made to the node to get the appropriate information. For a transaction request, for example, it is necessary to get the block information to validate the transaction is beyond the safe threshold. This can create overhead, especially for high-frequency requests. For this reason, it is important to understand when to turn on caching and how to configure the validation appropriately for your use case in order to avoid unnecessary overhead.
We keep a list of some reasonable values for bigger chains and use the time interval of 1 hour for everything else. Below is a list of the default values for internally configured chains:
ETH: RequestCacheValidationThreshold.FINALIZED (“finalized” block)
ARB1: 7 days
ZKSYNC: 1 hour
OETH: 3 minutes
MATIC: 30 minutes
ZKEVM: 1 hour
BASE: 7 days
SCR: 1 hour
GNO: 5 minutes
AVAX: 2 minutes
BNB: 2 minutes
FTM: 1 minute
For Ethereum mainnet, for example, this means that a request’s response will be cached
if the block number the request relies on is less than or equal to the finalized
block number. If the block number exceeds the finalized
block number, the response
won’t be cached. For all others, the response will be cached if the block timestamp
related to the data that is being requested is older than or equal to the time interval
configured for that chain. For any chain not on this list, the default value is set to
1 hour (this includes all testnets).
This behavior can be modified by setting the request_cache_validation_threshold
option to RequestCacheValidationThreshold.SAFE
, which uses the safe
block as
the threshold (Ethereum mainnet only), to your own time interval in seconds (for any
chain, including mainnet Ethereum), or to None
, which disables any validation and
caches all requests (this is not recommended for non testnet chains). The
RequestCacheValidationThreshold
enum, for mainnet finalized
and safe
values,
is imported from the web3.utils
module.
Note that the cacheable_requests
option can be used to specify a set of RPC
endpoints that are allowed to be cached. By default, this option is set to an internal
list of deemed-safe-to-cache endpoints, excluding endpoints such as eth_call
, whose
responses can vary and are not safe to cache. The default list of cacheable requests is
below, with requests validated by the request_cache_validation_threshold
option in
bold:
eth_chainId
web3_clientVersion
net_version
eth_getBlockByNumber
eth_getRawTransactionByBlockNumberAndIndex
eth_getBlockTransactionCountByNumber
eth_getUncleByBlockNumberAndIndex
eth_getUncleCountByBlockNumber
eth_getBlockByHash
eth_getTransactionByHash
eth_getTransactionByBlockNumberAndIndex
eth_getTransactionByBlockHashAndIndex
eth_getBlockTransactionCountByHash
eth_getRawTransactionByBlockHashAndIndex
eth_getUncleByBlockHashAndIndex
eth_getUncleCountByBlockHash
from web3 import Web3, HTTPProvider
from web3.utils import RequestCacheValidationThreshold
w3 = Web3(HTTPProvider(
endpoint_uri="...",
# optional flag to turn on cached requests, defaults to ``False``
cache_allowed_requests=True,
# optional, defaults to an internal list of deemed-safe-to-cache endpoints (see above)
cacheable_requests={"eth_chainId", "eth_getBlockByNumber"},
# optional, defaults to a value that is based on the chain id (see above)
request_cache_validation_threshold=60 * 60, # 1 hour
# request_cache_validation_threshold=RequestCacheValidationThreshold.SAFE, # Ethereum mainnet only
))
Retry Requests for HTTP Providers
HTTPProvider
and AsyncHTTPProvider
instances retry certain requests by default
on exceptions. This can be configured via the exception_retry_configuration
property on the provider instance, which takes a
ExceptionRetryConfiguration
class as its value. The
retry mechanism employs an exponential backoff strategy, starting from the initial
value determined by the backoff_factor
, and doubling the delay with each attempt,
up to the retries
value. Below is an example showing the default options for the
retry configuration and how to override them.
- class web3.providers.rpc.utils.ExceptionRetryConfiguration
- errors
A tuple of exceptions that the provider should retry on. The default is
HTTPProvider
:(ConnectionError, requests.HTTPError, requests.Timeout)
andAsyncHTTPProvider
:(aiohttp.ClientError, asyncio.TimeoutError)
.
- retries
The number of retries to attempt. The default is 5.
- backoff_factor
The initial delay multiplier, which doubles with each retry attempt. The default is 0.125.
- method_allowlist
A list of retryable methods. The default is an in-house list of deemed-safe-to- retry methods.
from web3 import Web3, HTTPProvider
from web3.providers.rpc.utils import (
REQUEST_RETRY_ALLOWLIST,
ExceptionRetryConfiguration,
)
w3 = Web3(HTTPProvider(
endpoint_uri="...",
exception_retry_configuration=ExceptionRetryConfiguration(
errors=DEFAULT_EXCEPTIONS,
# number of retries to attempt
retries=5,
# initial delay multiplier, doubles with each retry attempt
backoff_factor=0.125,
# an in-house default list of retryable methods
method_allowlist=REQUEST_RETRY_ALLOWLIST,
),
))
For the different http providers, DEFAULT_EXCEPTIONS
is defined as:
HTTPProvider
:(ConnectionError, requests.HTTPError, requests.Timeout)
AsyncHTTPProvider
:(ConnectionError, aiohttp.ClientError, asyncio.TimeoutError)
Setting retry_configuration
to None
will disable retries on exceptions for the
provider instance.
from web3 import Web3, HTTPProvider
w3 = Web3(HTTPProvider(endpoint_uri="...", retry_configuration=None)
Managers
The Manager acts as a gatekeeper for the request/response lifecycle. It is unlikely that you will need to change the Manager as most functionality can be implemented in the Middleware layer.
Request Processing for Persistent Connection Providers
- class web3.providers.persistent.request_processor.RequestProcessor
The RequestProcessor
class is responsible for the storing and syncing up of
asynchronous requests to responses for a PersistentConnectionProvider
. The
WebSocketProvider
and the
AsyncIPCProvider
are two persistent connection
providers. In order to send a request and receive a response to that same request,
PersistentConnectionProvider
instances have to match request id values to
response id values coming back from the socket connection. Any provider that does
not adhere to the JSON-RPC 2.0 specification
in this way will not work with PersistentConnectionProvider
instances. The specifics
of how the request processor handles this are outlined below.
Listening for Responses
Implementations of the PersistentConnectionProvider
class have a message listener
background task that is called when the socket connection is established. This task
is responsible for listening for any and all messages coming in over the socket
connection and storing them in the RequestProcessor
instance internal to the
PersistentConnectionProvider
instance. The RequestProcessor
instance is
responsible for storing the messages in the correct cache, either the one-to-one cache
or the one-to-many (subscriptions) queue, depending on whether the message has a
JSON-RPC id value or not.
One-To-One Requests
One-to-one requests can be summarized as any request that expects only one response
back. An example is using the eth
module API to request the latest block number.
>>> async def ws_one_to_one_example():
... async with AsyncWeb3(WebSocketProvider(f"ws://127.0.0.1:8546")) as w3:
... # make a request and expect a single response returned on the same line
... latest_block_num = await w3.eth.block_number
>>> asyncio.run(ws_one_to_one_example())
With persistent socket connections, we have to call send()
and asynchronously
receive responses via another means, generally by calling recv()
or by iterating
on the socket connection for messages. As outlined above, the
PersistentConnectionProvider
class has a message listener background task that
handles the receiving of messages.
Due to this asynchronous nature of sending and receiving, in order to make one-to-one request-to-response calls work, we have to save the request information somewhere so that, when the response is received, we can match it to the original request that was made (i.e. the request with a matching id to the response that was received). The stored request information is then used to process the response when it is received, piping it through the response formatters and middleware internal to the web3.py library.
In order to store the request information, the RequestProcessor
class has an
internal RequestInformation
cache. The RequestInformation
class saves important
information about a request.
- class web3._utils.caching.RequestInformation
- method
The name of the method - e.g. “eth_subscribe”.
- params
The params used when the call was made - e.g. (“newPendingTransactions”, True).
- response_formatters
The formatters that will be used to process the response.
- middleware_response_processors
Any middleware that processes responses that is present on the instance at the time of the request is appended here, in order, so the response may be piped through that logic when it comes in.
- subscription_id
If the request is an
eth_subscribe
request, rather than popping this information from the cache when the response to the subscription call comes in (i.e. the subscription id), we save the subscription id with the request information so that we can correctly process all subscription messages that come in with that subscription id. For one-to-one request-to-response calls, this value is alwaysNone
.
One-to-one responses, those that include a JSON-RPC id in the response object, are
stored in an internal SimpleCache
class, isolated from any one-to-many responses.
When the PersistentConnectionProvider
is looking for a response internally, it will
expect the message listener task to store the response in this cache. Since the request
id is used in the cache key generation, it will then look for a cache key that matches
the response id with that of the request id. If the cache key is found, the response
is processed and returned to the user. If the cache key is not found, the operation will
time out and raise a TimeExhausted
exception. This timeout can be configured by the
user when instantiating the PersistentConnectionProvider
instance via the
response_timeout
keyword argument.
One-To-Many Requests
One-to-many requests can be summarized by any request that expects many responses as a
result of the initial request. The only current example is the eth_subscribe
request. The initial eth_subscribe
request expects only one response, the
subscription id value, but it also expects to receive many eth_subscription
messages if and when the request is successful. For this reason, the original request
is considered a one-to-one request so that a subscription id can be returned to the
user on the same line. The many responses this call will produce can be handled in one
of a few ways.
The recommended way to handle one-to-many responses is to use the subscription manager
API. The subscription manager API is a public API on the AsyncWeb3
class, when
connected to a PersistentConnectionProvider
instance, that allows the user to
subscribe to a subscription and handle the many responses asynchronously. The
subscription_manager
instance is responsible for handling the many responses that
come in over the socket connection, as long as handlers are passed to each subscription
call. The subscription manager can also be used to unsubscribe from a subscription when
the user is done with it.
>>> async def new_heads_handler(
... handler_context: NewHeadsSubscriptionContext,
... ) -> None:
... result = handler_context.result
... print(f"New block header: {result}\n")
... if result["number"] > 1234567:
... await handler_context.subscription.unsubscribe()
>>> async def ws_subscription_example():
... async with AsyncWeb3(WebSocketProvider(f"ws://127.0.0.1:8546")) as w3:
... # Subscribe to new block headers and receive the subscription_id.
... # A one-to-one call with a trigger for many responses
... subscription_id = await w3.eth.subscribe("newHeads", handler=new_heads_handler)
...
... # Handle the subscription messages asynchronously using the subscription
... # manager. This will continue until no more subscriptions are present in
... # the subscription manager, or indefinitely if the `run_forever` flag
... # is set to `True`.
... await w3.subscription_manager.handle_subscriptions(run_forever=False)
>>> asyncio.run(ws_subscription_example())
The manager can also subscribe to many subscriptions at one time. The
EthSubscription
classes, available via web3.utils.subscriptions
, provide a
friendly API for managing subscriptions. Since each connection and provider instance
has its own message listener task and subscription manager instance, you can subscribe
to many subscriptions at once and handle the many responses that come in over the socket
connections via handlers. The handlers contain:
async_w3
: TheAsyncWeb3
instance that the subscription was made on.subscription
: The subscription instance that the handler is attached to.result
: The response that came in over the socket connection for the subscription.
Subscriptions also accept a handler_context
argument that can be used to pass
additional information to the handler when subscribing to a subscription. This can be
used to pass in an event object, for example, that can be used to parse a log event
when it comes in.
>>> from web3 import (
... AsyncWeb3,
... WebSocketProvider,
... AsyncIPCProvider,
... )
>>> from web3.utils.subscriptions import (
... EthSubscription,
... NewHeadsSubscription,
... NewHeadsSubscriptionContext,
... PendingTxSubscription,
... PendingTxSubscriptionContext,
... LogsSubscription,
... LogsSubscriptionContext,
... )
>>> async def new_heads_handler(
... handler_context: NewHeadsSubscriptionContext,
... ) -> None:
... header = handler_context.result
... print(f"New block header: {header}\n")
... if header["number"] > 1234567:
... await handler_context.subscription.unsubscribe()
>>> async def pending_txs_handler(
... handler_context: PendingTxSubscriptionContext,
... ) -> None:
... ...
>>> async def log_handler(
... handler_context: LogsSubscriptionContext,
... ) -> None:
... log_receipt = handler_context.result
... # event is now available in the handler context, because we pass it to in the
... # ``handler_context`` when subscribing to the log
... event_data = handler_context.transfer_event.process_log(log_receipt)
... print(f"Log event data: {event_data}\n")
>>> async def sub_manager():
... local_w3 = await AsyncWeb3(AsyncIPCProvider(LOCAL_IPC))
...
... # subscribe to many subscriptions via the subscription manager with handlers
... weth_contract = local_w3.eth.contract(
... address=local_w3.to_checksum_address("0xC02aaA39b223FE8D0A0e5C4F27eAD9083C756Cc2"),
... abi=WETH_ABI,
... )
... transfer_event = weth_contract.events.Transfer()
... await local_w3.subscription_manager.subscribe(
... [
... NewHeadsSubscription(label="new-heads-mainnet", handler=new_heads_handler),
... PendingTxSubscription(
... label="pending-tx-mainnet", # optional label
... full_transactions=True,
... handler=pending_tx_handler,
... ),
... LogsSubscription(
... label="WETH transfers", # optional label
... address=weth_contract.address,
... topics=[transfer_event.topic],
... handler=log_handler,
... # optional ``handler_context`` args to help parse a response
... handler_context={"transfer_event": transfer_event},
... ),
... ]
... )
...
... public_w3 = await AsyncWeb3(WebSocketProvider(PUBLIC_PROVIDER_WS))
... # subscribe via eth_subscribe, with handler and label (optional)
... await public_w3.eth.subscribe("public_newHeads", handler=pending_tx_handler, label="new-heads-public-ws")
>>> # This will handle all subscriptions until no more subscriptions are present
... # in either subscription manager instance. If the `run_forever` flag is set
... # to `True` on any manager instance, this will run indefinitely.
>>> await asyncio.gather(
... public_w3.subscription_manager.handle_subscriptions(),
... local_w3.subscription_manager.handle_subscriptions(),
... )
...
... # close the connections
... await local_w3.provider.disconnect()
... await public_w3.provider.disconnect()
>>> asyncio.run(sub_manager())
The process_subscriptions()
method on the
PersistentConnection
class, the public API for
interacting with the active persistent socket connection, is also set up to receive
eth_subscription
responses over an asynchronous iterator pattern. You can use this
method to listen for raw messages and process them as they come in.
>>> async def ws_subscription_example():
... async with AsyncWeb3(WebSocketProvider(f"ws://127.0.0.1:8546")) as w3:
... # Subscribe to new block headers and receive the subscription_id.
... # A one-to-one call with a trigger for many responses
... subscription_id = await w3.eth.subscribe("newHeads")
...
... # Listen to the socket for the many responses utilizing the
... # ``w3.socket`` ``PersistentConnection`` public API method
... # ``process_subscriptions()``
... async for response in w3.socket.process_subscriptions():
... # Receive only one-to-many responses here so that we don't
... # accidentally return the response for a one-to-one request in this
... # block
...
... print(f"{response}\n")
...
... if some_condition:
... # unsubscribe from new block headers, another one-to-one request
... is_unsubscribed = await w3.eth.unsubscribe(subscription_id)
... if is_unsubscribed:
... break
>>> asyncio.run(ws_subscription_example())
One-to-many responses, those that do not include a JSON-RPC id in the response object,
are stored in an internal asyncio.Queue
instance, isolated from any one-to-one
responses. When the PersistentConnectionProvider
is looking for one-to-many
responses internally, it will expect the message listener task to store these messages
in this queue. Since the order of the messages is important, the queue is a FIFO queue.
The process_subscriptions()
method on the PersistentConnection
class is set up
to pop messages from this queue as FIFO over an asynchronous iterator pattern.
If the stream of messages from the socket is not being interrupted by any other
tasks, the queue will generally be in sync with the messages coming in over the
socket. That is, the message listener will put a message in the queue and the
process_subscriptions()
method will pop that message from the queue and yield
control of the loop back to the listener. This will continue until the socket
connection is closed or the user unsubscribes from the subscription. If the stream of
messages lags a bit, or the provider is not consuming messages but has subscribed to
a subscription, this internal queue may fill up with messages until it reaches its max
size and then trigger a waiting asyncio.Event
until the provider begins consuming
messages from the queue again. For this reason, it’s important to begin consuming
messages from the queue, via the process_subscriptions()
method, as soon as a
subscription is made.