Query DWN Records

You can use the query function to obtain records and protocols from a DWN. This guide shows how to do both, as well as how to sort the query results.

tip

Querying a DWN is analogous to querying a database, and the flow of a query is similar to an SQL select statement.

A query can be read as select records with a filter of X from the DWN of this DID.

Querying Protocols

The following snippet queries the local DWN for protocols that match a given schema:

Querying Records

The following snippet queries a given DWN for records that match a given schema and are in a specific data format.

Note the from property used here. Much like SQL, where the FROM command is used to specify which table to select data from, in Web5, from specifies which DWN to query.

note

records.query() does not guarantee that the data is returned unless it is under a specific threshold (50 kb). To guarantee record data, call records.read().

Filterable Record Properties

Here are the properties you can use to filter your record query, along with explanations and examples for each.

Property	Value	Example
recipient	Recipient DID of message	"did:example:alice"
protocol	The URI of the protocol bucket in which to query	"example.com"
protocolPath	Records under a protocol path across all context IDs	"example"
contextId	recordId of a root record of a protocol	"bafyreianzpmhbgcgam5mys722vnsiuwn..."
schema	The URI of the schema bucket in which to query	"https://schema.org/Message"
recordId	Property contains the message recordId	"aa36ec55-c59b-4f20-8143-10f74aac696d"
parentId	recordId of the parent record in a protocol	"iadsfdreianzpmasdffcgam5mys722vnd..."
dataFormat	The IANA string for the data format to filter	"application/json"
dateCreated	Date the record was created	"2023-04-30T22:49:37.713976Z"
tags	User-defined key-value pairs for categorizing records	{"genre": "Action", "year": "2024"}

Filter by parentId

This snippet queries the DWN for records that have a parent record with a specific record ID:

Filter by protocol and protocolPath

Given the following protocol definition is installed:

Playlist Protocol Definition

And assuming playlist and video records have been created using this protocol, the following snippet demonstrates how to query for video records that match the protocol:

Sorting Query Results

Query results can be sorted via the dateSort field. Valid values for dateSort are:

Value	Sorts Results By	Order
createdAscending	dateCreated	ascending
createdDescending	dateCreated	descending
publishedAscending	datePublished	ascending
publishedDescending	datePublished	descending

Ascending Order

This code snippet queries for records with a plain text data format, and returns them in ascending order by the date they were published:

Descending Order

This code snippet queries for protocols with a certain URL, and returns them in descending order by the date they were created.