Hive-Nectar v0.0.9: A More Robust Node Handler

Hey everyone,

EDIT: Version is now 0.0.10. Emergency hotfix for broken permlinks.

Today, I'm happy to announce a new release for hive-nectar, which is now at version 0.0.9. This update focuses on improving the reliability and intelligence of how the library handles Hive nodes. Plus, I took the opportunity to clean up a lot of minor linting errors that were annoying me. A clean codebase is a happy codebase!

The core of this update is a significant refactor of the update_nodes function within the NodeList class. This is the part of the library responsible for finding and maintaining a list of healthy, fast nodes to connect to.

What's New in Node Handling?

Previously, the logic for updating the node list was a bit scattered. Now, it's much smarter and more authoritative.

• A Single Source of Truth: The update_nodes function now gets its authoritative list of nodes and performance data directly from the json_metadata of the @nectarflower account. This ensures it's always working with the most current and accurate report.
• Smarter Scoring: Instead of calculating scores locally, the function now directly uses the weighted_score provided in the report for ranking nodes. Any nodes not in the report have their scores zeroed out, so they don't interfere with the official ranking.
• Dynamic Node Discovery: The library now dynamically adds new nodes it finds in the report, even if they weren't in the original hard-coded list. This includes nodes that are known to be failing, which are correctly added with a score of -1 to avoid being used. This ensures the node list is always complete and up-to-date.
• Cleaner Code: A lot of unused fallback paths and redundant code were removed to make the logic leaner and easier to maintain.

These changes mean that any application using hive-nectar will be much more resilient and intelligent when connecting to the Hive blockchain. It will automatically favor the best-performing nodes and avoid ones that are down or struggling, leading to a faster and more reliable experience for the end-user.

This is an important step forward for the library, and I'm excited to get these improvements out there.

EDIT: https://github.com/TheCrazyGM/hive-nectar

As always,
Michael Garcia a.k.a. TheCrazyGM