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+# Contract Calling Patterns
+
+CosmWasm follows the actor model, but wraps it in atomic transactions.
+The standard contract call pattern is to simply return messages that must
+succeed, and the contract aborts if they don't. This covers > 90% of the
+cases we come across of, such as transferring tokens (native or cw20) or
+staking, etc based upon some contract state transition.
+
+We can query to predict success, or store a local counter of available
+balance, if we want, but in the end, we optimistically
+commit changes as if all other actions succeed, and just fire and forget,
+trusting the system to roll it back if they fail.
+
+This means there are 3 cases we do not handle:
+
+1. If you want to get the return value of a message call and do some
+    processing based on it.
+2. If you want to handle error cases with something else than aborting
+    the transaction. (This includes preventing an dispatched message from 
+    consuming all gas and aborting the original message).
+3. Listening to events/notifications of state changes of other contracts
+
+Here we will describe some patterns to let you cover some (but not all)
+of these cases.
+
+## Callbacks
+
+This is the most common case people ask for, and can easily be handled
+with some clever use of the existing system.
+
+The first case is where we want to do action A, then finish our processing.
+A clear example is in `cw20-staking`, where we want to withdraw all rewards
+from the validator, then reinvest them, as one atomic operation.
+In this case, we simply [return 2 messages](https://github.com/CosmWasm/cosmwasm-plus/blob/master/contracts/cw20-staking/src/contract.rs#L383-L395),
+the first one calling the staking module, and the second one calling a 
+protected function on our own contract `_BondAllTokens`.
+At the beginning of `_BondAllTokens`, we ensure this is 
+[called by our own contract](https://github.com/CosmWasm/cosmwasm-plus/blob/master/contracts/cw20-staking/src/contract.rs#L408-L410)
+to keep this a private callback and not a public entry point.
+
+The second case is where we want to get a result from the call, such as
+the contract address of a new contract. We need support from the called 
+contract to be able to do this. On the message, we pass an (optional)
+"callback" field with the address of the contract to inform. The called
+contract will then send a message in a pre-defined format to that contract.
+
+Example:
+
+```rust
+// called contract
+pub struct InitMsg {
+    pub some_data: String,
+    pub callback: Option<HumanAddr>,
+}
+
+// dispatch (like cw20 send), the callback contract
+// must support a superset of this in HandleMsg
+pub enum CallbackMsg {
+    Instantiated{
+        contract: HumanAddr,
+    }
+}
+
+// init inside the called contract
+pub fn init(deps: DepsMut,
+            env: Env,
+            info: MessageInfo,
+            msg: InitMsg) {
+    // do your main init logic....
+    
+    // create a callback message if needed
+    let mut messages: Vec<CosmosMsg> = vec![];
+    if let Some(callback) = msg.callback {
+        let data = &CallbackMsg::Instantiated { 
+            contract: env.contract.address
+        };
+        let msg = to_binary(data)?;
+        let wasm = WasmMsg::Execute {
+            contract_addr: callback,
+            msg,
+            send: vec![],
+        };
+        messages.push(wasm.into())
+    }
+    
+    Ok(HandleResponse{
+        messages,
+    })
+}
+```
+
+## Isolating contracts
+
+We don't currently support any technique for dispatching a message that is 
+not atomically executing in the same context (and using the same gas) as
+the calling contract. 
+
+We are investigating this in the context of building
+a cron service. (TODO: link to CyberCongress design).
+When there is an approach that allows this, it will be documented here.
+It will need a custom native (Cosmos SDK) module to enable it.
+
+## Subscribing to Events
+
+There are two types of event subscriptions. Both require that the contract
+emitting the events supports this explicitly. They are "hooks" and "listeners".
+The main difference is that hooks are executed synchronously and atomic in the
+same context as the contract (and can abort the original call on error),
+while listeners are executed asynchronously in their own context, only
+*after the original state change has been committed*.
+
+### Hooks
+
+Hooks are the simplest to implement and most powerful. You have a handle
+method to add/remove hooks to the contract, and everytime a particular state
+change happens, a predefined message is sent to all hooks. If any of these
+fail (or it runs out of gas), the transaction is aborted.
+
+This is powerful, meaning that "hook" can do some arbitrary checks and
+abort the original change if it disapproves. For example, a multisig
+could decide the group cannot change when a proposal is open. If a 
+"change membership" hook is executed, it can check if there are any
+open proposals, and if so, return an error.
+
+The downside, is that you must trust the hooked contracts highly. They
+cannot break the logic of the original contract, but they can "brick it"
+(Denial of Service - when they return an error and the datastore transaction gets rolled back). They also increase the gas cost of the normal call,
+and must be kept to a very limited set, or the gas price will be extremely
+high. Currently, I would only support this if you need an "admin"
+(or InitMsg) to set/remove hooks. And removing hooks does itself not trigger
+a hook, so this can always succeed to remove load if the hooks start
+making trouble.
+
+To see an example of hooks, please check out how `cw3-flex-multisig`
+registers on `cw4-group` to be informed of any changes to the voting set.
+This is essential to manage proper vote counts when the voting set changes
+while a proposal is open.
+
+* [Definition of the hooks in cw4 spec](https://github.com/CosmWasm/cosmwasm-plus/blob/c5e8fc92c0412fecd6cdd951c2c0261aa3c9445a/packages/cw4/src/hook.rs)
+* [Adding/removing hooks](https://github.com/CosmWasm/cosmwasm-plus/blob/11400ddcc18d56961b0592a655e3da9cba7fd5d8/contracts/cw4-group/src/contract.rs#L156-L190) - which may be refactored into common code
+* [Dispatching updates to all registered hooks](https://github.com/CosmWasm/cosmwasm-plus/blob/11400ddcc18d56961b0592a655e3da9cba7fd5d8/contracts/cw4-group/src/contract.rs#L91-L98)
+* [`cw3-flex-multisig` registers HandleMsg variant](https://github.com/CosmWasm/cosmwasm-plus/blob/db560558c901a2bda933d035dbbc30321c3c66ff/contracts/cw3-flex-multisig/src/msg.rs#L38-L39)
+* [`cw3-flex-multisig` updates state based on the hook](https://github.com/CosmWasm/cosmwasm-plus/blob/61f436c2203bde7770d9b13724e6548ba26615e7/contracts/cw3-flex-multisig/src/contract.rs#L276-L309)
+
+### Listeners
+
+There is currently no clean way to support listeners, as that would require
+some way of isolating contracts as a prerequisite. We can add some thoughts
+on how this will look once that exists when it is possible.
+
+In theory, we want to act like hooks, but executed in a different context.
+
+TODO: when this is possible
+
+## Initializing circular dependencies
+
+It often happens that contract A must know the address of contract B,
+and B know A. For example, say A is an CW20 token and B is a bonding curve
+contract that can mint new tokens. A must have B as "minter", and B must
+know A's address to dispatch the mint messages. Seems impossible to set up.
+But there is a way.
+
+The main point is that we script the setup not *inside* the contract, but
+*externally*, using eg. CosmJS deployment scripts (or CLI tools). This
+is actually more flexible, as the contract doesn't need to know the 
+init details of the other contracts it interacts with, just the public
+handle interface they support. 
+
+Starting as an external scripter named "Earl", we can do the following:
+
+* Earl uploads CW20 contract (A) and sets "Earl" as admin/minter
+* Earl upload Bonding curve contract (B) and sets A as managed token.
+* Earl updates contract A to set B as minter/admin
+
+After this we now see A <--> B, and Earl has no special permissions.
+He was just an admin briefly in the deploy script, so he could swap
+out the permissions once the other contracts were set up.
+
+As an example, we use this pattern when 
+[setting up the `cw3-flex-multisig` test cases](https://github.com/CosmWasm/cosmwasm-plus/blob/61f436c2203bde7770d9b13724e6548ba26615e7/contracts/cw3-flex-multisig/src/contract.rs#L572-L591).
+The multisig needs to know the group to query memberships, and the group
+needs to have a registered hook to the multisig to update it. We set them
+up as "OWNER" and then step down, leaving the contracts pointing to each other.