Async vs Sync

At aleph.im we really like coding using asyncio, using async/await construct on Python 3.

That being said, we totally understand that you might not have the same opinion, or that you might not be in a position to use it.

For this reason, all the functions have an async version and a sync version. The sync version are actually calling the async code behing your back (sneaky!) so you might be careful if you are calling it in an environment where you already have an asyncio loop used.

Most chain specific code is synchronous, and core aleph.im interaction might by async.

Sync code have to be imported from aleph_client.synchronous, async code from aleph_client.asynchronous, with same functions names.

aiohttp session

Most of the rest interface interaction code is based on aiohttp. For simplicity sake, if there isn’t a passed aiohttp session, the async functions needing it will instanciate one as a singleton and reuse it.

There is a lot of use cases where you might prefer to use your own version instead. Most functions will allow you to do so, by passing a session arg.

Example:

>>> import aiohttp
>>> from aleph_client.asynchronous import fetch_aggregate
>>> async with aiohttp.ClientSession() as session:
...     await fetch_aggregate(
...         "0x06DE0C46884EbFF46558Cd1a9e7DA6B1c3E9D0a8",
...         "profile", session=session)
...
{"bio": "tester", "name": "Moshe on Ethereum"}