Manually create and join peers to a new channel

Use the cli container to manually exercise the create channel and join channel APIs.

Channel - myc1 already exists, so let’s create a new channel named myc2.

Exec into the cli container:

docker exec -it cli bash

If successful, you should see the following in your terminal:

/opt/gopath/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric/peer #

Send createChannel API to Ordering Service:

CORE_PEER_COMMITTER_LEDGER_ORDERER=orderer:7050 peer channel create -c myc2

This will return a genesis block - myc2.block - that you can issue join commands with. Next, send a joinChannel API to peer0 and pass in the genesis block as an argument. The channel is defined within the genesis block:

CORE_PEER_COMMITTER_LEDGER_ORDERER=orderer:7050 CORE_PEER_ADDRESS=peer0:7051 peer channel join -b myc2.block

To join the other peers to the channel, simply reissue the above command with peer1 or peer2 specified. For example:

CORE_PEER_COMMITTER_LEDGER_ORDERER=orderer:7050 CORE_PEER_ADDRESS=peer1:7051 peer channel join -b myc2.block

Once the peers have all joined the channel, you are able to issues queries against any peer without having to deploy chaincode to each of them.

Use cli to deploy, invoke and query

Run the deploy command. This command is deploying a chaincode named mycc to peer0 on the Channel ID myc2. The constructor message is initializing a and b with values of 100 and 200 respectively.

CORE_PEER_ADDRESS=peer0:7051 CORE_PEER_COMMITTER_LEDGER_ORDERER=orderer:7050 peer chaincode deploy -C myc2 -n mycc -p github.com/hyperledger/fabric/examples -c '{"Args":["init","a","100","b","200"]}'

Run the invoke command. This invocation is moving 10 units from a to b.

CORE_PEER_ADDRESS=peer0:7051 CORE_PEER_COMMITTER_LEDGER_ORDERER=orderer:7050 peer chaincode invoke -C myc2 -n mycc -c '{"function":"invoke","Args":["move","a","b","10"]}'

Run the query command. The invocation transferred 10 units from a to b, therefore a query against a should return the value 90.

CORE_PEER_ADDRESS=peer0:7051 CORE_PEER_COMMITTER_LEDGER_ORDERER=orderer:7050 peer chaincode query -C myc2 -n mycc -c '{"function":"invoke","Args":["query","a"]}'

You can issue an exit command at any time to exit the cli container.

Creating your initial channel through the cli

If you want to manually create the initial channel through the cli container, you will need to edit the Docker Compose file. Use an editor to open docker-compose-gettingstarted.yml and comment out the channel_test.sh command in your cli image. Simply place a # to the left of the command. (Recall that this script is executing the create and join channel APIs when you run docker-compose up) For example:

cli:
  container_name: cli
  <CONTENT REMOVED FOR BREVITY>
  working_dir: /opt/gopath/src/github.com/hyperledger/fabric/peer
#  command: sh -c './channel_test.sh; sleep 1000'
#  command: /bin/sh

Then use the cli commands from above.