Support canonical ledger entry names in ledger/ledger_data/account_objects "type" field.

[mDuo13]

Summary

The ledger, ledger_data , and account_objects methods accept a type field to filter the results to specific types of ledger entries. The values you pass in aren't always possible to determine from the entries' canonical JSON names so it's kind of a guessing game.

Since all of these methods are returning raw/canonical ledger entries anyway it would make more sense if the type field of these requests matched the canonical names as they appear in the LedgerEntryType field. Maybe for convenience they could be case-insensitive.

Motivation

Would you be able to guess all of the short names in this table?

Canonical Name	Short Name
AccountRoot	account 😉
Amendments	amendments
Check	check
DepositPreauth	deposit_preauth
DirectoryNode	directory 😩
Escrow	escrow
FeeSettings	fee 😮
LedgerHashes	hashes 😑
NegativeUNL	(No short name defined—can't filter by this type.)
NFTokenOffer	nft_offer 🤔
NFTokenPage	nft_page 🆕
Offer	offer
PayChannel	payment_channel 😅
RippleState	state 😓
SignerList	signer_list
Ticket	ticket

(Emoji are not part of the names, I just added them as reactions to point out the less obvious ones.)

These short names also have to be manually added to the API methods whenever new types of ledger objects are implemented.

Solution

Modify these APIs (and any others that have a similar field, though I can't think of them offhand) so that type accepts the canonical name, case-insensitive. For backwards compatibility, continue to also support the existing short names (but mark them deprecated in the documentation).

Preferably, also do it in such a way that when someone develops a new ledger entry type, these methods support filtering on the new type using the canonical name with no new/additional code to the methods.

Relevant Source Code

rippled/src/ripple/rpc/impl/RPCHelpers.cpp

Line 894 in ebbf4b6

{jss::fee, ltFEE_SETTINGS},

[intelliot]

Consider adding to table: nft_page

[intelliot]

Given that Clio is intended to be a full replacement of the rippled API (for clients), this issue likely makes more sense for Clio to consider. With the lack of developer demand, the rippled behavior will be left alone.

[intelliot]

Canonical Name	Short Name
MPToken	mptoken
MPTokenIssuance	mpt_issuance

@bthomee - is there any appetite for someone on the team to pick this up? It is a Good First Issue, perhaps good for someone relatively newer on the team.

To reiterate - the ask is for type to accept the Canonical Name and be case-insensitive. Support for the current short names should be kept so it's not a breaking change.

[mvadari]

IMO these should not be case insensitive, but should just be converting the canonical name from PascalCase to snake_case.

[intelliot]

We should satisfy the original request by OP: Support canonical ledger entry names in ledger/ledger_data/account_objects "type" field. So when I want MPTokenIssuance, let me just request MPTokenIssuance.

In addition to that, if the APIs accept case-insensitive and/or snake_case names, that is fine.

[bthomee]

We should satisfy the original request by OP: Support canonical ledger entry names in ledger/ledger_data/account_objects "type" field. So when I want MPTokenIssuance, let me just request MPTokenIssuance.

In addition to that, if the APIs accept case-insensitive and/or snake_case names, that is fine.

Am I'm new to the team I figured this would be a Good First Issue for me. I took a stab at it in #5271 using case-insensitive filtering by canonical name, and marking the use of the RPC name as deprecated, both in a comment and in the API changelog.