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State Archival

Contract data is made up of three different types: Persistent, Temporary, and Instance. In a contract, these are accessed with env.storage().persistent(), env.storage().temporary(), and env.storage().instance() respectively; see the storage() docs.

Learn about choosing the right storage for your use case in this How-To Guide and other state archival related guides here.

All contract data has a Time To Live (TTL) that must be periodically extended. If an entry's TTL is not periodically extended, the entry's TTL will eventually go to 0 and either become "archived" or permanently deleted depending on the storage type. Each type of storage functions similarly, but has different fees and archival behavior:

  • When a Temporary entry's TTL is 0, it is deleted from the ledger and is permanently inaccessible.
  • When a Persistent or Instance entry TTL is 0, it becomes inaccessible and is "archived", but can be "restored" and used again via the RestoreFootprintOp.

Contract Data Type Descriptions​

The general usage and interface are identical for all storage types. They differ only in fees and archival behavior as follows:

Temporary​

  • Cheapest fees.
  • Permanently deleted when TTL goes to 0, cannot be restored.
  • Suitable for time-bounded data (i.e. price oracles, signatures, etc.) and easily recreateable data.
  • Unlimited amount of storage.

Instance​

  • Most expensive fees (same price as Persistent storage).
  • Archived when TTL goes to 0, can be restored using the RestoreFootprintOp operation.
  • Shares the same TTL as the contract instance. If the contract instance has not been archived, instance data is guaranteed to be accessible and not archived.
  • Limited amount of storage available.
  • Suitable for "shared" contract state that cannot be Temporary (i.e. admin accounts, contract metadata, etc.).

Persistent​

  • Most expensive fees (same price as Instance storage).
  • Archived when TTL goes to 0, can be restored using the RestoreFootprintOp operation.
  • Does not share the same TTL as the contract instance. If the contract instance is not archived, Persistent data may be archived and need to be restored before invoking the contract.
  • Unlimited amount of storage.
  • Suitable for user data that cannot be Temporary (i.e. balances).

Contract Data Best Practices​

As a general rule, Temporary storage should only be used for data that can be easily recreated or is only valid for a period of time, whereas Persistent or Instance storage should be used for data that cannot be recreated and should be kept permanently, such as a user's token balance.

Each storage type is in a separate key space. To demonstrate this, see the code snippet below:

const EXAMPLE_KEY: Symbol = symbol_short!("KEY");
env.storage().persistent().set(&EXAMPLE_KEY, 1);
env.storage().temporary().set(&EXAMPLE_KEY, 2);

env.storage().persistent().get(&EXAMPLE_KEY); // Returns Ok(1)
env.storage().temporary().get(&EXAMPLE_KEY); // Returns Ok(2)

All Instance storage is stored in a single contract instance LedgerEntry and shares a single TTL. This means that one call to env.storage().instance().extend_ttl() will extend the TTL of all Instance entries, as well as the contract instance itself. It will also extend the contract code entry as well, which we'll expand on in the next section. For Temporary and Persistent storage, each entry has its own TTL and must be extended individually. The interface is slightly different and takes the key of the entry being extended as well as the TTL extension value.

A call to extend_ttl(N) ensures that the current TTL of the contract instance entry is at least N ledgers. For example, if extend_ttl(100) is called and the contract instance entry has a current TTL of 50 ledgers, the TTL will be extended up to 100 ledgers. If extend_ttl(100) is called and the contract instance entry has a current TTL of 150 ledgers, the TTL will not be extended and the extend_ttl() call is a no-op.

In addition to contract-defined TTL extensions using the extend_ttl() function, a contract data entry's TTL can be extended via the ExtendFootprintTTLOp operation.

Contract Code and Contract Instance lifetimes​

Contract code entries and contract instances have lifetimes, and there are a couple ways to extend them. Methods like env.storage().instance().extend_ttl() and env.deployer().extend_ttl() extend both the contract code and contract instance. The threshold check and extensions are done independently for both the contract code and contract instance, so it’s possible that one is bumped but not the other depending on what the current TTL’s are.

If you would like to extend the contract code or contract instance separately, you can use env.deployer().extend_ttl_for_code() and env.deployer().extend_ttl_for_contract_instance() respectively. Calling both with the same parameters is equivalent to calling only env.deployer().extend_ttl().

Behavior of transactions that try to access an archived Persistent entry​

Here are some important points to keep in mind when it comes to archived entries -

  1. A Soroban transaction that has a key to an archived Persistent entry in the footprint will fail immediately during the apply stage prior to contract execution. It does not matter if the contract itself was going to access the entry.
  2. Due to the previous point that archived entries can never make it into smart contract logic, there is no reason to write code in your contract to handle archived entries. The same applies to contract test cases - while you may want to write tests that check if your extension logic is correct, you don't need to write archival tests because the transaction will fail before getting to the contract. It is possible though to access an archived entry in a Soroban test case, in which case the host will panic. You can read more about this in Test TTL Extensions.
  3. Archived persistent entries can never be re-created. They must instead be restored. Once they are restored, then they can be modified or deleted.

Terms and Semantics​

Live Until Ledger​

Each ContractData and ContractCode entry has a liveUntilLedger field stored in its LedgerEntry. The entry is no longer live (i.e. either archived or deleted depending on storage type) when current_ledger > liveUntilLedger.

TTL​

An entry's Time To Live (TTL) is defined as how many ledgers remain until the entry is no longer live. For example, if the current ledger is 5 and an entry's live until ledger is 15, then the entry's TTL is 10 ledgers.

Minimum TTL​

For each entry type, there is a minimum TTL that the entry will have when being created or restored. This TTL minimum is enforced automatically at the protocol level.

Minimum TTL is a network parameter. Refer to the resource reference to find the current values.

Maximum TTL​

On any given ledger, an entry's TTL can be extended up to the maximum TTL. This is a network parameter (see the resource limits table for the current maximum TTL). Maximum TTL is not enforced based on when an entry was created, but based on the current ledger. For example, if an entry is created on January 1st, 2024, its TTL could initially be extended up to January 1st, 2025. After this initial TTL extension, if the entry received another TTL extension later on January 10th, 2024, the TTL could be extended up to January 10th, 2025. The max_ttl() function can be used to determine the current maximum allowed TTL.

Operations​

ExtendFootprintTTLOp​

Semantics​

XDR:

/*
    Threshold: low
    Result: ExtendFootprintTTLResult
*/
struct ExtendFootprintTTLOp
{
    ExtensionPoint ext;
    uint32 extendTo;
};

ExtendFootprintTTLOp is a Soroban operation that will extend the live until ledger of the entries specified in the read-only set of the footprint. The read-write set must be empty. The extension will make sure that the entries' TTL will be at least extendTo ledgers from now.

Let's look at this example below.

Ex. Last closed ledger (LCL) = 5, Current Ledger = 6, liveUntilLedger = 8

entry1.liveUntilLedger = 10
entry2.liveUntilLedger = 14
entry3.liveUntilLedger = 10000

entry1.liveUntilLedger will be updated to 14 so it will live for 8 more ledgers, including
the current ledger, and the entry can be accessed in ledgers [6, 13].

entry2 and entry3 will not be updated because they already have an
liveUntilLedger that is large enough.

Transaction resources​

ExtendFootprintTTLOp is a Soroban operation, and therefore must be the only operation in a transaction. The transaction also needs to populate SorobanTransactionData transaction extension explained here. To fill out SorobanResources, use the transaction simulation mentioned in the provided link, or make sure readBytes includes the key and entry size of every entry in the readOnly set.

RestoreFootprintOp​

XDR:

/*
    Threshold: low
    Result: RestoreFootprintOp
*/
struct RestoreFootprintOp
{
    ExtensionPoint ext;
};

RestoreFootprintOp is a Soroban operation that will restore archived entries specified in the read-write set of the footprint and make them accessible again. The read-only set of the footprint must be empty. An archived entry is one where its liveUntilLedger is less than the current ledger number. Only persistent and instance entries can be restored.

The restored entry will have its live until ledger extended to the minimum the network allows for newly created entries, which is current_ledger_number + 4095 for persistent entries. The minimum TTL value is a network configuration parameter and is subject to be updated (likely increased) via network upgrades.

Transaction resources​

RestoreFootprintOp is a Soroban operation, and therefore must be the only operation in a transaction. The transaction also needs to populate SorobanTransactionData transaction extension explained here. To fill out SorobanResources, use the transaction simulation mentioned in the provided link, or make sure writeBytes includes the key and entry size of every entry in the readWrite set and make sure extendedMetaDataSizeBytes is at least double of writeBytes.

Examples​

We've done our best to build tooling around state archival in both the Stellar RPC server as well as the JavaScript SDK to make it easier to deal with, and this set of examples demonstrates how to leverage it.

Overview​

Both restoring and extending the TTL of ledger entries follows a three-step process regardless of their nature (contract data, instances, etc.):

  1. Identify the ledger entries. This usually means acquiring them from a Stellar RPC server as part of your initial transaction simulation (see the transaction simulation docs and the simulateTransaction RPC method).

  2. Prepare your operation. This means describing the ledger entries within the corresponding operation (i.e. ExtendFootprintTTLOp or RestoreFootprintOp) and its ledger footprint (the SorobanTransactionData field), then simulating it to fill out fee and resource usage information (when restoring, you usually have simulation results already).

  3. Submit the transaction and start again with what you were trying to do in the first place.

Each of the examples below will follow a structure like this. We'll work our way through two different scenarios:

  1. a piece of persistent data in my contract is archived
  2. my contract instance or the WASM is archived

Remember, though, that any combination of these scenarios can occur in reality.

Preparation​

In order to help the scaffolding of the code, we'll reuse the rudimentary, retry-enabled transaction polling function yeetTx which we outlined in another guide.

In the following code, we will also leverage Server.prepareTransaction. This is a helpful method that, given a transaction, will simulate it, then amend the transaction with the simulation results (fees, etc.) and return that. Then, it can just be signed and submitted. We will also use SorobanDataBuilder, a convenient abstraction that lets us use a builder pattern to set the appropriate storage footprints for a transaction.

Example: My data is archived!​

We'll start with the likeliest occurrence: my piece of persistent data is archived because I haven't interacted with my contract in a while. How do I make it accessible again?

In this example, we will assume two things: the contract itself is still live (i.e. others have been extending its TTL while you've been away) and you don't know how your archived data is represented on the ledger. If you did, you could skip the steps below where we figure that out and just set up the restoration footprint directly. The process involves three discrete steps:

  1. Simulate our transaction as we normally would.
  2. If the simulation indicated it, we perform restoration via Operation.restoreFootprint using its hints.
  3. We retry running our initial transaction.

Let's see that in code:

import {
  BASE_FEE,
  Networks,
  Keypair,
  TransactionBuilder,
  SorobanDataBuilder,
  SorobanRpc,
  xdr,
} from "@stellar/stellar-sdk"; // add'l imports to preamble
const { Api, assembleTransaction } = SorobanRpc;

// assume that `server` is the Server() instance from the preamble

async function submitOrRestoreAndRetry(
  signer: Keypair,
  tx: Transaction,
): Promise<Api.GetTransactionResponse> {
  // We can't use `prepareTransaction` here because we want to do
  // restoration if necessary, basically assembling the simulation ourselves.
  const sim = await server.simulateTransaction(tx);

  // Other failures are out of scope of this tutorial.
  if (!Api.isSimulationSuccess(sim)) {
    throw sim;
  }

  // If simulation didn't fail, we don't need to restore anything! Just send it.
  if (!Api.isSimulationRestore(sim)) {
    const prepTx = assembleTransaction(tx, sim);
    prepTx.sign(signer);
    return yeetTx(prepTx);
  }

  //
  // Build the restoration operation using the RPC server's hints.
  //
  const account = await server.getAccount(signer.publicKey());
  let fee = parseInt(BASE_FEE);
  fee += parseInt(sim.restorePreamble.minResourceFee);

  const restoreTx = new TransactionBuilder(account, { fee: fee.toString() })
    .setNetworkPassphrase(Networks.TESTNET)
    .setSorobanData(sim.restorePreamble.transactionData.build())
    .addOperation(Operation.restoreFootprint({}))
    .build();

  restoreTx.sign(signer);

  const resp = await yeetTx(restoreTx);
  if (resp.status !== Api.GetTransactionStatus.SUCCESS) {
    throw resp;
  }

  //
  // now that we've restored the necessary data, we can retry our tx using
  // the initial data from the simulation (which, hopefully, is still
  // up-to-date)
  //
  const retryTxBuilder = TransactionBuilder.cloneFrom(tx, {
    fee: (parseInt(tx.fee) + parseInt(sim.minResourceFee)).toString(),
    sorobanData: sim.transactionData.build(),
  });
  // because we consumed a sequence number when restoring, we need to make sure
  // we set the correct value on this copy
  retryTxBuilder.source.incrementSequenceNumber();

  const retryTx = retryTxBuilder.build();
  retryTx.sign(signer);

  return yeetTx(retryTx);
}

Notice that when restoration is required, simulation still succeeds. The way that we know that something needs to be restored is the presence of a restorePreamble structure in the RPC's response. This contains both the footprint and fee needed for restoration, while the rest of the response contains the invocation simulation as if that restoration was done first.

This is great, as it means fewer round-trips to get going again!

Example: My contract is archived!​

As you can imagine, if your deployed contract instance or the code that backs it is archived, it can't be loaded to execute your invocations. Remember, there's a distinct, one-to-many relationship on the chain between a contract's code and deployed instances of that contract:

We need both to be live for our contract calls to work.

Let's work through how these can be recovered. The recovery process is slightly different: while we don't need simulation to figure out the footprints, we do need to do an additional ledger entry fetch. We can leverage Contract.getFootprint() to get the ledger key used by a given contract instance, but that won't give us its backing WASM code. For that, we'll recreate this example here.

We also need simulation to figure out the fees for our restoration. This, however, can be easily covered by the SDK's Server.prepareTransaction helper, which will do simulation and assembly for us:

import {
  BASE_FEE,
  Contract,
  Keypair,
  Networks,
  TransactionBuilder,
  SorobanDataBuilder,
  Operation,
  SorobanRpc,
} from "@stellar/stellar-sdk";

async function restoreContract(
  signer: Keypair,
  c: Contract,
): Promise<SorobanRpc.Api.GetTransactionResponse> {
  const instance = c.getFootprint();

  const account = await server.getAccount(signer.publicKey());
  const wasmEntry = await server.getLedgerEntries(
    getWasmLedgerKey(instance)
  );

  const restoreTx = new TransactionBuilder(account, { fee: BASE_FEE })
    .setNetworkPassphrase(Networks.TESTNET)
    .setSorobanData(
      // Set the restoration footprint (remember, it should be in the
      // read-write part!)
      new SorobanDataBuilder().setReadWrite([
        instance,
        wasmEntry
      ]).build(),
    )
    .addOperation(Operation.restoreFootprint({}))
    .build();

  const preppedTx = await server.prepareTransaction(restoreTx);
  preppedTx.sign(signer);
  return yeetTx(preppedTx);
}

function getWasmLedgerKey(entry: xdr.ContractDataEntry):  {
  return xdr.LedgerKey.contractCode(
    new xdr.LedgerKeyContractCode({
      hash: entry.val().instance().wasmHash()
    })
  );
}

The nice part about this approach is that it will restore both the instance and the backing WASM code if necessary, skipping either if they're already in the ledger state.