Book Image

Learn Blockchain Programming with JavaScript

By : Eric Traub
Book Image

Learn Blockchain Programming with JavaScript

By: Eric Traub

Overview of this book

Learn Blockchain Programming with JavaScript begins by giving you a clear understanding of what blockchain technology is. You’ll then set up an environment to build your very own blockchain and you’ll add various functionalities to it. By adding functionalities to your blockchain such as the ability to mine new blocks, create transactions, and secure your blockchain through a proof-of-work you’ll gain an in-depth understanding of how blockchain technology functions. As you make your way through the chapters, you’ll learn how to build an API server to interact with your blockchain and how to host your blockchain on a decentralized network. You’ll also build a consensus algorithm and use it to verify data and keep the entire blockchain network synchronized. In the concluding chapters, you’ll finish building your blockchain prototype and gain a thorough understanding of why blockchain technology is so secure and valuable. By the end of this book, you'll understand how decentralized blockchain networks function and why decentralization is such an important feature for securing a blockchain.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)

Blockchain constructor function

Let's get started with building our blockchain data structure. We'll start by opening all of the files that we have in our blockchain directory by using the Sublime editor. If you are comfortable using any other editor, you can use that too. Open our entire blockchain directory in whichever editor you prefer.

We'll be building our entire blockchain data structure in the dev/blockchain.js file that we created in Chapter 1, Setting up the Project. Let's build this blockchain data structure by using a constructor function that we learned about in the previous section. So, let's begin:

For the constructor by type the following:

function Blockchain () {
}

For now, the Blockchain () function is not going to take any parameters.

Next, inside of our constructor function, we are going to add the following terms:

function Blockchain...