Reading and Writing Messages

Let's first learn about the MessageActor we created just before instantiating the Peer type, tasked with reading messages from the corresponding peer.

TCP Message Actor

The MessageActor type is a simple struct that wraps the transport reader and communicates to the Peer via an unbound channel.

Filename: p2p_wire/peer.rs

// Path: floresta-wire/src/p2p_wire/peer.rs

pub struct MessageActor<R: AsyncRead + Unpin + Send> {
    pub transport: ReadTransport<R>,
    pub sender: UnboundedSender<ReaderMessage>,
}

// Path: floresta-wire/src/p2p_wire/peer.rs

pub fn create_actors<R: AsyncRead + Unpin + Send>(
    transport: ReadTransport<R>,
) -> (UnboundedReceiver<ReaderMessage>, MessageActor<R>) {
    // Open an unbound channel to communicate read peer messages
    let (actor_sender, actor_receiver) = unbounded_channel();

    // Initialize the actor with the `actor_sender` and the transport reader
    let actor = MessageActor {
        transport,
        sender: actor_sender,
    };

    // Return the `actor_receiver` (to receive P2P messages from the actor), and the actor
    (actor_receiver, actor)
}

This MessageActor implements a run method, which independently handles all incoming messages from the corresponding peer, and sends them to the Peer type.

Note that the messages of the channel between MessageActor and Peer are of type ReaderMessage. Let's briefly inspect this enum, which is also defined in peer.rs.

// Path: floresta-wire/src/p2p_wire/peer.rs

pub enum ReaderMessage {
    Message(NetworkMessage),
    Error(PeerError),
}

NetworkMessage is a type from the bitcoin crate, used for all P2P messages.
PeerError is the unified error type for the Peer struct (similar to how WireError is the error type for UtreexoNode).

The run method simply invokes the inner method, and if it fails we notify the error to the Peer. The inner method is responsible for continuously reading messages from the transport via read_message and sending them to the Peer.

// Path: floresta-wire/src/p2p_wire/peer.rs

async fn inner(&mut self) -> std::result::Result<(), PeerError> {
    loop {
        let msg = self.transport.read_message().await?;
        self.sender.send(ReaderMessage::Message(msg))?;
    }
}

pub async fn run(mut self) -> Result<()> {
    if let Err(err) = self.inner().await {
        self.sender.send(ReaderMessage::Error(err))?;
    }
    Ok(())
}

The read_message method, implemented in transport.rs, will actually read all the data from the peer, using either the v1 or v2 transport protocols.

Writing Messages

In order to write messages via the transport, we use the following write method on Peer:

// Path: floresta-wire/src/p2p_wire/peer.rs

pub async fn write(&mut self, msg: NetworkMessage) -> Result<()> {
    debug!("Writing {} to peer {}", msg.command(), self.id);
    self.writer.write_message(msg).await?;
    Ok(())
}

Once again, here we delegate on a write_message method on the transport writer component. This method serializes the data and sends it via the respective transport protocol.

And that's all about how we read and write P2P messages! Next, we'll explore a few Peer methods and how it handles network messages.

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