When a contract emits an event, it is stored in the StateDB struct :
// StateDBs within the ethereum protocol are used to store anything
// within the merkle trie. StateDBs take care of caching and storing
// nested states. It's the general query interface to retrieve:
// * Contracts
// * Accounts
type StateDB struct {
db Database
trie Trie
// This map holds 'live' objects, which will get modified while processing a state transition.
stateObjects map[common.Address]*stateObject
stateObjectsDirty map[common.Address]struct{}
// DB error.
// State objects are used by the consensus core and VM which are
// unable to deal with database-level errors. Any error that occurs
// during a database read is memoized here and will eventually be returned
// by StateDB.Commit.
dbErr error
// The refund counter, also used by state transitioning.
refund uint64
thash, bhash common.Hash
txIndex int
logs map[common.Hash][]*types.Log
logSize uint
preimages map[common.Hash][]byte
// Journal of state modifications. This is the backbone of
// Snapshot and RevertToSnapshot.
journal *journal
validRevisions []revision
nextRevisionId int
lock sync.Mutex
}
This is the member that holds the data in the above struct:
logs map[common.Hash][]*types.Log
During the block processing each transaction returns a receipt (with Event logs)
and they are stored in an array (from core/state_processor.go
):
// Iterate over and process the individual transactions
for i, tx := range block.Transactions() {
statedb.Prepare(tx.Hash(), block.Hash(), i)
receipt, _, err := ApplyTransaction(p.config, p.bc, nil, gp, statedb, header, tx, usedGas, cfg)
if err != nil {
return nil, nil, 0, err
}
receipts = append(receipts, receipt)
allLogs = append(allLogs, receipt.Logs...)
}
Once the receipts are collected, the consensus algorithm calculates hash on all the recepits, and includes the resulting hash into the block's header. After that the block's hash is generated and distributed to other nodes.
The process for creating a new block is here (core/types/block.go
)
func NewBlock(header *Header, txs []*Transaction, uncles []*Header, receipts []*Receipt) *Block {
b := &Block{header: CopyHeader(header), td: new(big.Int)}
// TODO: panic if len(txs) != len(receipts)
if len(txs) == 0 {
b.header.TxHash = EmptyRootHash
} else {
b.header.TxHash = DeriveSha(Transactions(txs))
b.transactions = make(Transactions, len(txs))
copy(b.transactions, txs)
}
if len(receipts) == 0 {
b.header.ReceiptHash = EmptyRootHash
} else {
b.header.ReceiptHash = DeriveSha(Receipts(receipts))
b.header.Bloom = CreateBloom(receipts)
}
if len(uncles) == 0 {
b.header.UncleHash = EmptyUncleHash
} else {
b.header.UncleHash = CalcUncleHash(uncles)
b.uncles = make([]*Header, len(uncles))
for i := range uncles {
b.uncles[i] = CopyHeader(uncles[i])
}
}
return b
}
This is the line that calculates the hash on the receipts:
b.header.ReceiptHash = DeriveSha(Receipts(receipts))
Events are stored as a part of the Receipt
struct:
// Receipt represents the results of a transaction.
type Receipt struct {
// Consensus fields
PostState []byte `json:"root"`
Status uint64 `json:"status"`
CumulativeGasUsed uint64 `json:"cumulativeGasUsed" gencodec:"required"`
Bloom Bloom `json:"logsBloom" gencodec:"required"`
Logs []*Log `json:"logs" gencodec:"required"`
// Implementation fields (don't reorder!)
TxHash common.Hash `json:"transactionHash" gencodec:"required"`
ContractAddress common.Address `json:"contractAddress"`
GasUsed uint64 `json:"gasUsed" gencodec:"required"`
}
this is the array containing the events:
Logs []*Log `json:"logs" gencodec:"required"`
And the envent is defined as:
// Log represents a contract log event. These events are generated by the LOG opcode and
// stored/indexed by the node.
type Log struct {
// Consensus fields:
// address of the contract that generated the event
Address common.Address `json:"address" gencodec:"required"`
// list of topics provided by the contract.
Topics []common.Hash `json:"topics" gencodec:"required"`
// supplied by the contract, usually ABI-encoded
Data []byte `json:"data" gencodec:"required"`
// Derived fields. These fields are filled in by the node
// but not secured by consensus.
// block in which the transaction was included
BlockNumber uint64 `json:"blockNumber"`
// hash of the transaction
TxHash common.Hash `json:"transactionHash" gencodec:"required"`
// index of the transaction in the block
TxIndex uint `json:"transactionIndex" gencodec:"required"`
// hash of the block in which the transaction was included
BlockHash common.Hash `json:"blockHash"`
// index of the log in the receipt
Index uint `json:"logIndex" gencodec:"required"`
// The Removed field is true if this log was reverted due to a chain reorganisation.
// You must pay attention to this field if you receive logs through a filter query.
Removed bool `json:"removed"`
}
All this data is tored in --datadir``/geth/chaindata
directory
You can trust the event logs because the hash of all receipts is included into the Block's hash, so the data is cryptographically "sealed".
In case you want to validate the Receipts you get them with this function:
receipts:=core.GetBlockReceipts(ethereum.ChainDb(), block.Hash(), block.NumberU64())`
And recalculate the hash again. It must match the ReceiptsHash
of the block header.
I hope this it is now clear about how events work internally.