Minifabric is a Hyperledger Lab that makes setting up a Hyperledger Fabric network easy and fast. It also helps application developers with needed connection profiles and wallets when a Fabric network is up and running. Hyperledger Fabric has powerful capabilities, but there can be challenges with using it to deploy and implement a network, especially for those who are new to distributed ledgers or are used to other blockchain systems such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
With the right tooling though, you can easily deploy Fabric networks, learn how Fabric works, understand the life cycles of Fabric artifacts and become an expert as a Fabric network administrator or chaincode developer. The Minifabric Lab was started with these goals in mind. allows you to easily setup a Fabric network, expand your network, install and upgrade your own chaincode, invoke transactions, inspect your ledger, and change configurations of your channel.
Minifabric comes as a 10-line bash script (for Linux and OS X) or 30-line batch script (for Windows) and is available on github.com under Apache 2 license. You can get started with Minifabric to start your Hyperledger Fabric journey by simply following this README.
Recent development work has also added the capability to deploy Hyperledger Fabric onto Kubernetes. In the past, one could use Minifabric to deploy and use Fabric in a Docker environment. Now, with this new added feature, you can deploy Fabric onto Kubernetes clusters such as IKS, GKE and AKS. The commands to accomplish this task are identical with the commands to deploy in a Docker environment, which makes a big difference in terms of using and learning Minifabric.
Minifabric Resources
On Tuesday, July 27 at 9AM PDT, I will be giving an hour long introduction and demo of Minifabric and will be answering questions. This will be an open call, and everyone is welcome to dial-in and join.
There are also already recorded videos that can help you learn to use Minifabric. Here’s a rundown of video resources and what they cover:
- Minifabric Introduction and demo
An overview of Minifabric and demonstration of how to develop go applications using these profiles and monitor the Fabric network using Hyperledger Explorer.
- Quick Start
How to use Minifabric to stand up a Fabric network and clean up
- Channels
How to create channels, join peers to channels, inspect and change channel configuration
- Chaincode
How to work with chaincode including install, approve, commit, upgrade, invoke and query
- Policy and Organizations
How to inspect and change endorsement policies, how to bring in new organizations and how to work with private data collections
- Artifacts and VSCode Fabric Extension
How to use VSCode Fabric extension to work with a production like Fabric network. Minifabric creates many files that help Fabric SDK users easily connect to a Fabric network.
- Inside Minifabric
How Minifabric executes various commands and how Minifabric is able to always keep up with the latest Fabric. Discusses how Minifabric was designed and implemented, its commands and parameters.
Get Involved
As an open source project, you are welcome to check out the code, submit your own contributions and connect with other people in the community. Check out the Minifabric repo on Github to learn more about how to get involved.