in-memory-requests.md

In-Memory Requests

Overview

In-memory requests allow for creating and managing requests without immediately persisting them to storage. This enables faster payment workflows and deferred persistence.

Key benefits:

• Faster payment flow: In-memory requests are helpful when payment is the priority, such as in e-commerce cases. In this scenario, the request is a receipt rather than an invoice.
• Deferred Persistence: With in-memory requests, a request can be created on the front end with a user's signature and passed on to the backend for persistence.

How it works:

The flow of creating and paying an in-memory request is similar to a regular request with the following key differences:

• Create an in-memory request by passing the argument skipPeristence: true when instantiating the RequestNetwork instance.
• An in-memory request is not persisted immediately like normal requests. Instead, it is stored in memory on the device where it was created. It can be persisted at a later time using the persistTransaction()function.
• An in-memory request has the inMemoryInfo property.
• Avoid calling getData() on an in-memory request because it will fail silently by returning an empty EventEmitter object.
• Retrieving an in-memory request with requestClient.fromRequestId() will fail because the request has not been persisted yet so it is not possible to read it from the Request Node.

{% stepper %} {% step %}

Install necessary dependencies

To create in-memory requests, it is necessary to install the following package:

npm install @requestnetwork/request-client.js

Along with the following package for payments:

npm install @requestnetwork/payment-processor

{% endstep %}

{% step %}

Create an in-memory request

Create an in-memory request by passing the argument skipPeristence: true when instantiating the RequestNetwork instance.

// Request parameters 
const requestParameters = {...}


const web3SignatureProvider = new Web3SignatureProvider(
    ethersProvider!.provider
  );

 const inMemoryRequestNetwork = new RequestNetwork({
    nodeConnectionConfig: {
      baseURL: "https://gnosis.gateway.request.network",
    },
    signatureProvider: web3SignatureProvider,
    skipPersistence: true,
  });

 let inMemoryRequest =
    await inMemoryRequestNetwork.createRequest(requestParameters);

{% endstep %}

{% step %}

Pay an in-memory request

To pay an in-memory request, pass the inMemoryInfo.requestData property to the payment function.

import {
  payRequest
} from "@requestnetwork/payment-processor";

const paymentTx = await payRequest(
    inMemoryRequest.inMemoryInfo.requestData,
    signer
  );
  
await paymentTx.wait(confirmationBlocks);

{% endstep %}

{% step %}

Persist in-memory request

In-memory requests need to be persisted using a new RequestNetwork client that does not use the skipPersistence property.

const persistingRequestNetwork = new RequestNetwork({
    nodeConnectionConfig: {
      baseURL: "https://gnosis.gateway.request.network",
    },
  });

await persistingRequestNetwork.persistRequest(inMemoryRequest);

{% endstep %} {% endstepper %}