v0.43.0

[0.43.0] - 2025-07-17

This is a reasonably small release which is mainly bug fixing, but has a couple of changes I'd like to elaborate on:

Remove codec::Encode and codec::Decode derives from generated APIs by default (#2008)

When generating an API using the #[subxt::subxt(...)] macro (or programatically via subxt-codegen), we had always previously added parity_scale_codec::Encode and parity_scale_codec::Decode derives to all of the generated types. Most places in Subxt have not made use of these for a long time (relying instead on scale_encode::EncodeAsType and scale_decode::DecodeAsType, since they allow encoding and encoding which takes the type information into account and can more gracefully handle incompatibilities).

We eventually hit an issue to which the most appropriate fix was just to remove these derives.

If you still need the parity_scale_codec::Encode or parity_scale_codec::Decode derives on certain types, you have two options:

1. Use the derive_for_type attr to add them back where needed, eg:

   #[subxt::subxt(
     ...
     derive_for_type(
       path = "staging_xcm::v3::multilocation::MultiLocation",
       derive = "parity_scale_codec::Encode, parity_scale_codec::Decode",
       recursive
     )
   )]

2. Use the derive_for_all_types attr to add them back everywhere, eg:

   #[subxt::subxt(
     ...
     derive_for_all_types = "parity_scale_codec::Encode, parity_scale_codec::Decode"
   )]
   

Prefer (1) where possible to reduce the amount of generated code, and reduce the likelihood of running into issues around those derives in certain edge cases.

This PR changes some things around storage keys to remove one last requirement for Encode and Decode derives, and also as a side effect changes api.storage().call_raw() slightly to no longer also try to decode the resulting type via Decode, leaving this to the user (and also meaning it's much easier now for the user to obtain the raw bytes for some storage entry).

In other words, instead of doing something like:

let (compact_len, metadata) = rt
        .call_raw::<(Compact<u32>, frame_metadata::RuntimeMetadataPrefixed)>(
            "Metadata_metadata",
            None,
        )
        .await?;

You would now do:

let meta_bytes = rt.call_raw("Metadata_metadata", None).await?;
let (compact_len, metadata): (Compact<u32>, frame_metadata::RuntimeMetadataPrefixed) =
    Decode::decode(&mut &*meta_bytes)?;

Address some issues around tx mortality (#2025)

Prior to this change, the intended behavior was that any transaction submitted via an OnlineClient would have a mortality of 32 blocks by default, and any transaction submitted via an OfflineClient would be immortal by default. A couple of issues were present or cropped up however:

• If you explicitly configure the mortality via setting params like PolkadotExtrinsicParamsBuilder::new().mortal(32).build(), the OfflineClient transaction would still be immortal, because it didn't have enough information to properly configure the mortality as asked for (by virtue of being offline and unable to fetch it).
• The intended behaviour turned out to have been broken, and transactions were being submitted as immortal even via the OnlineClient by default, unless mortality was explicitly configured.
• There was no easy way to actually set the mortality for an OfflineClient transaction; you'd have to do something like this:

  let params = DefaultExtrinsicParamsBuilder::new();
  params.5 = CheckMortalityParams::mortal_from_unchecked(for_n_blocks, from_block_n, from_block_hash);

With this PR, transactions are now mortal by default using the OnlineClient, we now return an error if you try to construct a transaction with the OfflineClient and try to use params.mortal(..) when configuring it, and we expose params.mortal_from_unchecked(..) to allow configuration for offline transactions without the ugly code above.

In this PR, we also discovered an issue decoding Eras and fixed this, so that decoding the mortality of a transaction when it is mortal should now work.

Add FFI example (#2037)

I'd like to do a quick shoutout to @wassimans, who submitted an excellent example for how to interact with Subxt via the C FFI in Python and Node.JS. This is something I've wanted to add for a while, so it's lovely to see this new example which highlights one of the strengths of Subxt over Javascript based compatitors in the space.

All of the non-trivial changes in this release are listed below:

Added

• Add FFI example (#2037)

Changed

• Remove codec::Encode and codec::Decode derives from generated APIs by default (#2008)
• Address some issues around tx mortality (#2025)

Fixed

• Fix 'subxt explore storage': don't turn keys to bytes (#2038)
• Refactor: improve nonce and block injection in extrinsic params (#2032)
• Improve docs for at_latest (#2035)
• Clippy fixes for latest Rustc (#2033)
• docs: fix minor comment typos (#2027)
• chore: remove redundant backtick in comment (#2020)
• Keep codec attrs even when Encode/Decode not used (#2023)
• Run CI on v0.N.x branches or PRs to them for ease of backporting (#2017)
• De-dup types early in CLI/macro so that derives/substitutes work for de-duped types (#2015)
• If only one hasher, always treat any key as a single and not NMap key, even if it's a tuple. (#2010)

v0.42.1

[0.42.1] - 2025-05-12

This patch release reduces the rust-version to 1.85.0, given that we don't use any features newer than this at the moment.

v0.42.0

[0.42.0] - 2025-05-09

The primary benefit of this release is introducing support for the about-to-be-stabilised-in-polkadot-sdk V16 metadata, and with that, support for calling Pallet View Functions on runtimes which will support this. Pallet View Functions are used much like Runtime APIs, except that they are declared in specific pallets and not declared at the runtime-wide level, allowing pallets to carry their own APIs with them.

Pallet View Functions

Calling a Pallet View Function in this Subxt release will look like:

use runtime::proxy::view_functions::check_permissions::{Call, ProxyType};

// Construct the call, providing the two arguments.
let view_function_call = runtime::view_functions()
    .proxy()
    .check_permissions(
        Call::System(runtime::system::Call::remark { remark: b"hi".to_vec() }),
        ProxyType::Any
    );

// Submit the call and get back a result.
let _is_call_allowed = api
    .view_functions()
    .at_latest()
    .await?
    .call(view_function_call)
    .await?;

Like Runtime APIs and others, the dynamic API can also be used to call into Pallet View Functions, which has the advantage of not needing the statically generated interface, but the downside of not being strongly typed. This looks like the following:

use scale_value::value;

let metadata = api.metadata();

// Look up the query ID for the View Function in the node metadata:
let query_id = metadata
    .pallet_by_name("Proxy")
    .unwrap()
    .view_function_by_name("check_permissions")
    .unwrap()
    .query_id();

// Construct the call, providing the two arguments.
let view_function_call = subxt::dynamic::view_function_call(
    *query_id,
    vec![
        value!(System(remark(b"hi".to_vec()))), 
        value!(Any())
    ],
);

// Submit the call and get back a result.
let _is_call_allowed = api
    .view_functions()
    .at_latest()
    .await?
    .call(view_function_call)
    .await?;

Updated Config trait

Another change to be aware of is that our Config trait has been tweaked. The Hash associated type is no longer needed, as it can be obtained via the Hasher associated type already, and PolkadotConfig/SubstrateConfig now set the hasher by default to be DynamicHasher256, which will (when V16 metadata is available for a runtime) automatically select between Keccak256 and BlakeTwo256 hashers depending on what the chain requires.

Other changes

We also solidify our support for V1 archive RPCs, upgrade the codebase to Rust 2024 edition, and a bunch of other changes, the full list of which is here:

Added

• Support v16 metadata and use it by default if it's available (#1999)
• Metadata V16: Implement support for Pallet View Functions (#1981)
• Metadata V16: Be more dynamic over which hasher is used. (#1974)

Changed

• Update to 2024 edition (#2001)
• Update Smoldot to latest version (#1991)
• Update native test timeout to 45 mins (#2002)
• chore(deps): tokio ^1.44.2 (#1989)
• Add DefaultParams to allow more transaction extensions to be used when calling _default() methods (#1979)
• Use wat instead of wabt to avoid CI cmake error (and use supported dep) (#1980)
• Support v1 archive RPCs (#1977)
• Support V16 metadata and refactor metadata code (#1967)
• Allow submitting transactions ignoring follow events (#1962)
• Improve error message regarding failure to extract metadata from WASM runtime (#1961)
• Add docs for subxt-rpcs and fix example (#1954)

Fixed

• Fix CLI storage diff (#1958)
• chore: fix some typos (#1997)

v0.41.0

[0.41.0] - 2025-03-10

This release makes two main changes:

Add subxt-rpcs crate.

Previously, if you wanted to make raw RPC calls but weren't otherwise interested in using the higher level Subxt interface, you still needed to include the entire Subxt crate.

Now, one can depend on subxt-rpcs directly. This crate implements the new RPC-V2 chainHead/transaction endpoints as well as the currently unstable archive endpoints. it also implements various legacy endpoints that Subxt uses as a fallback to the modern ones. It also provides several feature gated clients for interacting with them:

• jsonrpsee: A jsonrpsee based RPC client for connecting to individual RPC nodes.
• unstable-light-client: A Smoldot based light client which connects to multiple nodes in chains via p2p and verifies everything handed back, removing the need to trust any individual nodes.
• reconnecting-rpc-client: Another jsonrpsee based client which handles reconnecting automatically in the event of network issues.
• mock-rpc-client: A mock RPC client that can be used in tests.

Custom clients can be implemented if preferred.

Example usage via jsonrpsee feature:

use subxt_rpcs::{RpcClient, ChainHeadRpcMethods};

// Connect to a local node:
let client = RpcClient::("ws://127.0.0.1:9944").await?;
// Use chainHead/archive V2 methods:
let methods = ChainHeadRpcMethods::new(client);

// Call some RPC methods (in this case a subscription):
let mut follow_subscription = methods.chainhead_v1_follow(false).await.unwrap();
while let Some(follow_event) = follow_subscription.next().await {
    // do something with events..
}

Support creating V5 transactions.

Subxt has supported decoding V5 transactions from blocks since 0.38.0, but now it also supports constructing V5 transactions where allowed. Some naming changes have also taken place to align with the Substrate terminology now around transactions (see #1931 for more!).

The main changes here are:

• subxt_core now contains versioned methods for creating each of the possible types of transaction (V4 unsigned, V4 signed, V5 "bare" or V5 "general"), enabling the APIs to be tailored for each case.
• subxt exposes higher level wrappers these (ie api.tx().create_v4_unsigned(..), api.tx().create_v5_bare(..)), but also continues to expose the same standard APIs for creating transactions which will, under the hood, decide what to create based on the chain we're connected to.
• APIs like sign_and_submit now take a T::AccountId rather than a T::Address since it was found to not be useful to provide the latter, and V5 transactions only expect an T::AccountId.
• Signed Extensions are now referred to as Transaction Extensions, and we've tweaked the interface around how these work slightly to accomodate the fact that in V5 transactions, the signature is passed into a transaction extension where applicable (VerifySignature).
• As a side effect, it's simpler to set mortality on transactions; no more block hash needs to be provided; only the number of blocks you would like a transaction to live for.

A full list of the relevant changes is as follows:

Added

• Support constructing and submitting V5 transactions (#1931)
• Add archive RPCs to subxt-rpcs (#1940)
• Document generating interface from Runtime WASM and change feature to runtime-wasm-path (#1936)
• Split RPCs into a separate crate (#1910)

Changed

• Wrap the subxt::events::Events type to avoid exposing subxt_core errors and types unnecessarily (#1948)
• Allow transaction timeout in ChainheadBackend to be configured (#1943)
• refactor: make ExtrinsicEvents::new public for external access (#1933)

v0.40.0

[0.40.0] - 2025-03-06

This release reverts the usage of the polkadot-sdk umbrella crate, which was causing issues such as an increased number of dependencies in Cargo.lock. For more details, see #1925.

Additionally, this update bumps the Polkadot SDK-related dependencies to their latest versions, ensuring compatibility and stability.

Fixed

• Remove usage of polkadot-sdk umbrella crate (#1926)

Full Changelog: v0.39.0...v0.40.0

v0.39.0

[0.39.0] - 2025-02-04

This release is mostly bug fixes and changes. The only change that should be a breaking change is removing the substrate-compat feature flag (see #1850), which we'll go into more detail about.

The substrate-compat feature flag has been removed.

The substrate-compat feature flag essentially provided:

1. An implementation of the subxt::config::Header trait for anything implementing sp_runtime::traits::Header (here).
2. Same for subxt::config::Hasher and anything implementing sp_runtime::traits::Hasher (here).
3. A subxt_core::tx::PairSigner type which could be given something implementing sp_core::Pair and then be used to sign transactions (here).
4. From impls for sp_runtime::AccountId32 and related for subxt::utils::AccountId32 (here).
5. Likewise for sp_runtime::MultiAddress and subxt::utils::MultiAddress (here).
6. Likewise for sp_runtime::MultiSignature and subxt::utils::MultiSignature (here).

While useful, providing these features in Subxt is almost impossible to maintain: we can only support a single version of sp_runtime/sp_core at a time, but many versions are in use in the wild. This led to various issues regarding the mismatch between sp_* crates in use and a given version of Subxt. More generally, the goal of Subxt is to be independent from any specific version of Substrate, and communicate via the exposed RPC APIs in order to work across any compatible Substrate version (or indeed, alternative implementations that follow things like the RPC spec).

As a result, we've taken the decision to remove this compatibility layer from Subxt itself. To migrate away from this feature, we suggest:

1. Using the example here to see how to use a Substrate signer to sign Subxt transactions.
2. Looking at subxt_signer instead, if it's a viable alternative in your case.
3. Following the "here" links above to see what impls were removed. Impls can generally be recreated as needed using wrapper types which allow converting between Substrate and Subxt types/traits, for instance:

// Wrap a substrate header type in this to impl the subxt Header trait:
struct SubxtHeader<T>(pub T);

// This basically copies the code removed from Subxt, but on a wrapper type:
impl <T> subxt::config::Header for SubxtHeader<T>
where
    T: sp_runtime::traits::Header,
    <T as sp_runtime::traits::Header>::Number: Into<u64>,
{
    type Number = T::Number;
    type Hasher = T::Hashing;

    fn number(&self) -> Self::Number {
        *self.0.number()
    }
}

The hope is that this pattern is applicable to any such types that you find useful to share between Substrate and Subxt code. Please raise an issue if you can't find a solution in your case, and we'll endeavour to help!

The result of this is that your code will work against whichever Substrate crate versions you are using, at the cost of this code no longer being included behind the substrate-compat feature flag.

A full list of relevant changes and fixes (nothing was added in this release) is as follows:

Changed

• remove substrate compat (#1850)
• migrate custom error trait impls to thiserror (#1856)
• re-export jsonrpsee in subxt::ext (#1843)

Fixed

• don't double hash: use the same hash in ExtrinsicDetails and ExtrinsicDetails (#1917)
• fix and test sr25519 signing in nostd (#1872)
• preserve custom metadata when converting between Subxt metadata and frame_metadata (#1914)
• fix: don't wrap rpc error in DisconnectedWillReconnect in reconnecting rpc client (#1904)
• fix: substrate runner, support new libp2p addr log (#1892)
• update Artifacts (auto-generated) (#1874)
• bump frame-decode and frame-metadata to latest (#1870)
• fix unstable-light-client + ChainHeadBackend tx events (#1865)
• when native feature is enabled, we need polkadot-sdk/std for eg examples to work (#1864)
• load latest metadata version from Wasm blobs. (#1859)
• minor fix - Yew example (#1852)
• update the release notes to work for current releases (#1842)

v0.38.1

[0.38.1] - 2025-01-24

This is a bug-fix release that fixes a bug in the reconnecting-rpc-client where the error was wrapped in the wrong error variant
which kept retry logic to keep retrying the same error indefinitely.

Fixed

• don't wrap rpc error in DisconnectedWillReconnect in reconnecting rpc client (#1904)

Full Changelog: v0.38.0...v0.38.1

v0.38.0

[0.38.0] - 2024-10-24

This release doesn't introduce any substantial breaking changes and focuses primarily on incremental improvements, testing and bug fixes. A few of the highlights include:

• #1785: Support decoding V5 extrinsics in blocks (currently Subxt will still submit V4 extrinsics). This also unifies our extrinsic decoding logic into one place.
• #1802: Stabilizing the subxt::backend::unstable::UnstableBackend (it's now called subxt::backend::chain_head::ChainHeadBackend). This backend can be used to interact with the modern chainHead RPC methods exposed by Smoldot and compliant RPC nodes. See this example.
• #1803: Stabilizing the reconnecting-rpc-client. See this example.
• #1720: A nice little QoL improvement if you have the raw runtime WASM and would like to generate an interface directly from that (ie with #[subx(runtime_path = "path/to/runtime.wasm")]).
• #1661: Support loading keys directly from the PolkadotJS JSON to be used in Subxt.
• #1638: Improve support for Eth style chains by defining a 20-byte account ID type directly in subxt-core. See this example.

The notable changes in this release are as follows:

Added

• add reconnecting tests for unstable_backend (#1765)
• add support for generating metadata from runtime wasm files (#1720)
• support loading keys from Polkadot-JS accounts (#1661)
• allow tx payloads to be boxed (#1690)
• add hash method to ExtrinsicDetails (#1676)
• expose secret_key method for ecdsa::Keypair and eth::Keypair (#1628)
• add 20-byte account id to subxt_core (#1638)

Changed

• make it clearer which extrinsic failed to decode (#1835)
• chore(deps): bump frame-metadata from 16 to 17 (#1836)
• chore(deps): bump scale family crates, primitive-types and impl-serde (#1832)
• chore(deps): replace instant with web-time (#1830)
• deps: use polkadot-sdk umbrella crate (#1786)
• stabilize reconnecting-rpc-client (#1803)
• stabilize chainhead backend (#1802)
• derive serialize on more types (#1797)
• use frame-decode for core extrinsic decode logic (including v5 support) (#1785)
• reconn-rpc-client: parse URL before connecting (#1789)
• update proc_macro_error to proc_macro_error2 (#1767)
• chore(deps): update Smoldot to the latest version (#1400)
• remove unneeded ?Sized bound and replace never type with () (#1758)
• improve test coverage for legacy Backend impl (#1751)
• add integration tests for unstable-reconnecting-rpc-client (#1711)
• replace reconnecting-jsonrpsee-ws-client with subxt-reconnecting-rpc-client (#1705)
• allow PartialExtrinsic to be held across await points (#1658)
• chore(deps): bump jsonrpsee from 0.22.5 to 0.23.1 (#1656)

Fixed

• fix stripping metadata in the case where enums like RuntimeCall are handed back (#1774)
• fix: defalt-feature -> default-features Cargo.toml (#1828)
• avoid hang by notifying subscribers when the backend is closed (#1817)
• fix: error message on rpc errors (#1804)
• docs: fix typos (#1776)
• examples: fix reconnecting logging target (#1733)
• docs: fix spelling issues (#1699)
• chore: fix some comments (#1697)
• codegen: Fix decode error by adding #[codec(dumb_trait_bound)] (#1630)

v0.37.1

[0.37.1] - 2024-10-22

This patch release adds basic support for V5 extrinsics into subxt-core. We only bump subxt-core in this release; other crates should then take this patch automatically but you may need to cargo update to get the change.

v0.37.0

[0.37.0] - 2024-05-28

This release mainly adds support for the sign extension CheckMetadataHash and fixes a regression introduced in v0.36.0
where the type de-duplication was too aggressive and lots of the same type such as BoundedVec was duplicated to
plenty of different types such as BoundedVec1, BoundedVec2, .. BoundedVec.

Added

• Implemented sign_prehashed for ecdsa::Keypair and eth::Keypair (#1598)
• Add a basic version of the CheckMetadataHash signed extension (#1590)

Changed

• Remove derive_more (#1600)
• chore(deps): bump scale-typegen v0.8.0 (#1615)

Full Changelog: v0.36.0...v0.37.0