JSON-RPC Providers

The Polkadot-API entry point is createClient(provider). It takes a JsonRpcProvider that connects to a JSON-RPC endpoint, enabling Polkadot-API to interact with the chain.

Providers

We have mainly two first-class providers:

• Smoldot Provider, connecting to a local instance of Smoldot, Polkadot's light client.
• WebSocket Provider, connecting to a JSON-RPC server through WebSocket.

Enhancers

Besides providers, we offer some enhancers (aka middlewares) for JSON-RPC providers, some of them increasing capabilities, and others fixing external issues.

• Polkadot-SDK Compatibility Enhancer, fixing common pitfalls among JSON-RPC servers running over Polkadot-SDK nodes.
• Legacy Provider, a compliant middleware that exposes the modern JSON-RPC APIs while delegating calls to the legacy JSON-RPC APIs.
• Logs Provider and Recorder, allowing to capture JSON-RPC messaging logs, useful for debugging and/or analytics.

JSON-RPC providers in-depth

For a description of the provider interface, behaviour and advanced use cases such as building your own providers, check out our JSON-RPC Provider Interface Docs.