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Getting Started

The C bindings allow for you to build a Streams API which can be pulled into other languages. The streams instance underlying the bindings is built with the sync-client flag to ensure a compatible client interface using the iota.rs iota-client crate.

Before building anything you'll need to make sure you have cmake installed on your machine.

To build the library, first make sure you're in the c directory:

cd bindings/c

Update the flags in the CMakeLists.txt and run cmake . to prepare the installation files.

Options for CMakeLlists.txt​

  • NO_STD: Enable no_std build, without iota_client (when ON, SYNC_CLIENT isnt supported)
  • SYNC_CLIENT: Enable sync transport via iota_client, otherwise it's going to be Bucket which can only be used for tests
  • STATIC: Build static library when ON, otherwise dynamic library
  • RELEASE: Build in release or debug mode (when ON, builds release, when OFF, build debug)

To build the library run:

make

This generates a binary library to be included into a project. This can be either:

  • iota_streams_c_static
  • iota_streams_c.so (Unix)
  • iota_streams_c.dll (Windows)

An example of the header file can be found in include/channels.h.

Starting a Channel​

Once the package has been built, you can pull it into a script file like so: 

#include "iota_streams/channels.h"
#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
 uint8_t multi_branching = 0;
 char seed[] = "Some unique seed";
 char const encoding[] = "utf-8";
 const size_t size = 1024;
 char const *url = "https://chrysalis-nodes.iota.org";
 
 transport_t *tsp = tsp_client_new_from_url(url);
 // Author constructor requires: (seed, encoding, payload size, multi branching, transport client)
 author_t *auth = auth_new(seed, encoding, size, multi_branching, tsp);
 address_t const *ann_link = auth_send_announce(auth);
 printf("Announcement message sent");
 
 char const *ann_address_inst_str = get_address_inst_str(ann_link);
 char const *ann_address_id_str = get_address_id_str(ann_link);
 // Link used by subscribers to attach to instance
 printf("Link: %s:%s\n", ann_address_inst_str, ann_address_id_str);
 
 // Clean up
 drop_str(ann_address_inst_str);
 drop_str(ann_address_id_str);
 drop_address(ann_link);
 auth_drop(auth);
 tsp_drop(tsp);
}