Currently in the Cosmos SDK, events are defined in the handlers for each message as well as `BeginBlock` and `EndBlock`. Each module doesn't have types defined for each event, they are implemented as `map[string]string`. Above all else this makes these events difficult to consume as it requires a great deal of raw string matching and parsing. This proposal focuses on updating the events to use **typed events** defined in each module such that emiting and subscribing to events will be much easier. This workflow comes from the experience of the Akash Network team.
Currently in the Cosmos SDK, events are defined in the handlers for each message, meaning each module doesn't have a cannonical set of types for each event. Above all else this makes these events difficult to consume as it requires a great deal of raw string matching and parsing. This proposal focuses on updating the events to use **typed events** defined in each module such that emiting and subscribing to events will be much easier. This workflow comes from the experience of the Akash Network team.
[Our platform](http://github.com/ovrclk/akash) requires a number of programatic on chain interactions both on the provider (datacenter - to bid on new orders and listen for leases created) and user (application developer - to send the app manifest to the provider) side. In addition the Akash team is now maintaining the IBC [`relayer`](https://github.com/ovrclk/relayer), another very event driven process. In working on these core pieces of infrastructure, and integrating lessons learned from Kubernetes developement, our team has developed a standard method for defining and consuming typed events in Cosmos SDK modules. We have found that it is extremely useful in building this type of event driven application.
As the Cosmos SDK gets used more extensively for apps like `peggy`, other peg zones, IBC, DeFi, etc... there will be an exploding demand for event driven applications to support new features desired by users. We propose upstreaming our findings into the Cosmos SDK to enable all Cosmos SDK applications to quickly and easily build event driven apps to aid their core application. Wallets, exchanges, explorers, and defi protocols all stand to benefit from this work.
If this proposal is accepted, users will be able to build event driven Cosmos SDK apps in go by just writing `EventHandler`s for their specific event types and passing them to `EventEmitters` that are defined in the Cosmos SDK.
Here, the `EmitTypedEvent` is a method on `EventManager` which takes typed event as input and apply json serialization on it. Then it maps the JSON key/value pairs to `event.Attributes` and emits it in form of `sdk.Event`. `Event.Type` will be the type URL of the proto message.
When we subscribe to emitted events on the tendermint websocket, they are emitted in the form of an `abci.Event`. `ParseTypedEvent` parses the event back to it's original proto message.
Users will be able to subscribe using `client.Context.Client.Subscribe` and consume events which are emitted using `EventHandler`s.
Akash Network has built a simple [`pubsub`](https://github.com/ovrclk/akash/blob/90d258caeb933b611d575355b8df281208a214f8/pubsub/bus.go#L20). This can be used to subscribe to `abci.Events` and [publish](https://github.com/ovrclk/akash/blob/90d258caeb933b611d575355b8df281208a214f8/events/publish.go#L21) them as typed events.
Please see the below code sample for more detail on this flow looks for clients.