Create a Subgraph on The Graph Protocol

Step 1: Define the data I want to query

I want to query the GRT token on Arbitrum. The entities that I would want to be able to query are:

What do I want to do with the query?

All of my queries are time-series queries, so are counts in the period:

This should help me to know what I want to include in the graphQL schema, if it's available.

Step 2: Understand the associated contract

I looked up on Arbiscan the associated GRT contract: $0.08 | Graph Token (GRT) Token Tracker | Arbiscan

0x9623063377AD1B27544C965cCd7342f7EA7e88C7

So I am going to miniscan.xyz and entered the contract above for the Arbitrum network.

The UX is easier than Arbiscan (What if Etherscan became a data platform?) and gives me alot of relevant information:

Step 3: Initialize Subgraph

Install the CLI tool:

npm install -g @graphprotocol/graph-cli

Initialize the subgraph with graph init --from-contract <contract-address> --abi <abi-file> --network mainnet

So my <contract-address> is 0x9623063377AD1B27544C965cCd7342f7EA7e88C7
<abi-file> is https://miniscan.xyz/code?network=arbitrum&address=0x9623063377ad1b27544c965ccd7342f7ea7e88c7&codeType=ABI

So let's see what happens when I enter:

graph init --from-contract 0x9623063377AD1B27544C965cCd7342f7EA7e88C7

I'm asked which protocol, and select Ethereum

Then asked which tool, I select subgraph-studio

My slug tims-grt-subgraph

Directory: just hit return

I know i want to run on Arbitrum, so I will use the arbitrum-one network.

It responds with Fetching ABI from Etherscan

Contract address I hit return because it populates with the contract above.

Start block I hit tab return for the default
Contract name - I didn't know what this is, so I followed the video tutorial and grabbed the name from Miniscan: L2GraphToken

At first things look good:

Index contract events as entities (Y/n) · true

  Generate subgraph

  Write subgraph to directory

✔ Create subgraph scaffold

✔ Initialize networks config

But then I got an error:

✖ Failed to initialize subgraph repository: stdout maxBuffer length exceeded

    RangeError: stdout maxBuffer length exceeded

    Code: ERR_CHILD_PROCESS_STDIO_MAXBUFFER

So I piped everything to a file to see if that helped:

graph init --from-contract 0x9623063377AD1B27544C965cCd7342f7EA7e88C7 2>&1 | tee graph_init_output.txt

And it worked:

Subgraph tims-grt created in tims-grt2

Next steps:

  1. Run `graph auth` to authenticate with your deploy key.

  2. Type `cd tims-grt2` to enter the subgraph.

  3. Run `npm run deploy` to deploy the subgraph.

Step 4 Log into Studio to get keys to authenticate

I log in and Create Subgraph

Question that came up for me: does the slug generated need to match the slug I have given? Does the order matter, meaning, should I have created the Subgraph in studio first? The document [1] didn't reference that Studio set up before diving into the CLI. The video [2] did, and I'm not sure, so as a User I definitely feel some anxiety at this point.

Second issue: I don't have a deployment URL, but it's displayed in the tutorial:

Mine looks like this!

So questions now in my mind:

  1. Is there a hard sequence. Studio must be set up before going to CLI? If so, how would I have known?
  2. What does it mean to not have a development query URL?

Continuing:

graph auth --studio <hide this deploy key>

I get a Deploy key set for https://api.studio.thegraph.com/deploy/

Then cd into the directory (this is nice it's a cute and paste from Studio).

Step 5: codegen and build

graph codegen && graph build

graph codegen checks for type safety, which I achieved with the response:
Types generated successfully

However, compiling failed!

I got an error:

    Error: could not locate `node_modules` in parent directories of subgraph manifest

After jumping in The Graph public Discord, I found that I am not the only one!

This is what the Discord bot responded with:

Make sure you're in the correct directory where node_modules is located. If the issue persists, try running `npm install` in your terminal [[1]](https://discord.com/channels/438038660412342282/438070183794573313/1128803970681417819 "[1]
(https://discord.com/channels/438038660412342282/438070183794573313/1128803970681417819)").

![](https://images-ext-1.discordapp.net/external/0MCc5Ha5H5_PuWdAqmVyYjQG6c05XPzuZfn3yudF6Y8/%3Fsize%3D1024/https/cdn.discordapp.com/avatars/955744627481255976/3eb60a12a1ff46c6fdbe240d9e726400.png)Generated using AwesomeQA AI
  1. That's a weird response at this point since up to now, I have been using the npm packages
  2. I believe I have been in the right directory

But I tried again after confirming that node_modules is in the same directory and it worked!

graph build

  Skip migration: Bump mapping apiVersion from 0.0.1 to 0.0.2

  Skip migration: Bump mapping apiVersion from 0.0.2 to 0.0.3

  Skip migration: Bump mapping apiVersion from 0.0.3 to 0.0.4

  Skip migration: Bump mapping apiVersion from 0.0.4 to 0.0.5

  Skip migration: Bump mapping apiVersion from 0.0.5 to 0.0.6

  Skip migration: Bump manifest specVersion from 0.0.1 to 0.0.2

  Skip migration: Bump manifest specVersion from 0.0.2 to 0.0.4

✔ Apply migrations

✔ Load subgraph from subgraph.yaml

  Compile data source: L2GraphToken => build/L2GraphToken/L2GraphToken.wasm

✔ Compile subgraph

  Copy schema file build/schema.graphql

  Write subgraph file build/L2GraphToken/abis/L2GraphToken.json

  Write subgraph manifest build/subgraph.yaml

✔ Write compiled subgraph to build/

  

Build completed: build/subgraph.yaml

That was not a good experience and somewhere, whether in the error message or in the docs make it easier to confirm I'm in the right place.

Step 5: YAML

Based on the above, seems like I should look at the generated files:

So the spacing isn't correct cutting and pasting from VSCode, but oh well.

specVersion: 0.0.5

schema:

file: ./schema.graphql

dataSources:

- kind: ethereum

name: L2GraphToken

network: arbitrum-one

source:

address: "0x9623063377AD1B27544C965cCd7342f7EA7e88C7"

abi: L2GraphToken

startBlock: 42449274

mapping:

kind: ethereum/events

apiVersion: 0.0.7

language: wasm/assemblyscript

entities:

- AdminUpdated

- ImplementationUpdated

- PendingImplementationUpdated

abis:

- name: L2GraphToken

file: ./abis/L2GraphToken.json

eventHandlers:

- event: AdminUpdated(indexed address,indexed address)

handler: handleAdminUpdated

- event: ImplementationUpdated(indexed address,indexed address)

handler: handleImplementationUpdated

- event: PendingImplementationUpdated(indexed address,indexed address)

handler: handlePendingImplementationUpdated

file: ./src/l-2-graph-token.ts

References

  1. Creating a Subgraph | Docs | The Graph ↩︎

  2. The Graph 🛠️ Quickstart to Subgraph Development & Querying - Marcus Rein - YouTube ↩︎