js-stellar-sdk

js-stellar-sdk is a Javascript library for communicating with a Stellar Horizon server. It is used for building Stellar apps either on Node.js or in the browser.

It provides:

• a networking layer API for Horizon endpoints.
• facilities for building and signing transactions, for communicating with a Stellar Horizon instance, and for submitting transactions or querying network history.

stellar-sdk vs stellar-base

stellar-sdk is a high-level library that serves as client-side API for Horizon. stellar-base is lower-level library for creating Stellar primitive constructs via XDR helpers and wrappers.

Most people will want stellar-sdk instead of stellar-base. You should only use stellar-base if you know what you're doing!

If you add stellar-sdk to a project, do not add stellar-base! Mis-matching versions could cause weird, hard-to-find bugs. stellar-sdk automatically installs stellar-base and exposes all of its exports in case you need them.

Warning! Node version of stellar-base (stellar-sdk dependency) package is using ed25519 package, a native implementation of Ed25519 in Node.js, as an optional dependency. This means that if for any reason installation of this package fails, stellar-base (and stellar-sdk) will fallback to the much slower implementation contained in tweetnacl.

If you are using stellar-sdk/stellar-base in a browser you can ignore this. However, for production backend deployments you should definitely be using ed25519. If ed25519 is successfully installed and working StellarSdk.FastSigning variable will be equal true. Otherwise it will be false.

Quick start

Using npm to include js-stellar-sdk in your own project:

npm install --save stellar-sdk

For browsers, use Bower to install js-stellar-sdk. It exports a variable StellarSdk. The example below assumes you have stellar-sdk.js relative to your html file.

<script src="stellar-sdk.js"></script>
<script>
  console.log(StellarSdk);
</script>

Install

To use as a module in a Node.js project

1. Install it using npm:

npm install --save stellar-sdk

2. require/import it in your JavaScript:

var StellarSdk = require('stellar-sdk');

Help! I'm having trouble installing the SDK on Windows

Unfortunately, the Stellar platform development team mostly works on OS X and Linux, and so sometimes bugs creep through that are specific to windows. When installing stellar-sdk on windows, you might see an error that looks similar to the following:

error MSB8020: The build tools for v120 (Platform Toolset = 'v120 ') cannot be found. To build using the v120 build tools, please install v120 build tools.  Alternatively, you may upgrade to the current Visual Studio tools by selecting the Project menu or right-click the solution, and then selecting "Retarget solution"

To resolve this issue, you should upgrade your version of nodejs, node-gyp and then re-attempt to install the offending package using npm install -g --msvs_version=2015 ed25519. Afterwards, retry installing stellar-sdk as normal.

If you encounter the error: "failed to find C:\OpenSSL-Win64", You need to install OpenSSL. More information about this issue can be found here.

In the event the above does not work, please join us on our community slack to get help resolving your issue.

To self host for use in the browser

1. Install it using bower:

bower install stellar-sdk

2. Include it in the browser:

<script src="./bower_components/stellar-sdk/stellar-sdk.js"></script>
<script>
  console.log(StellarSdk);
</script>

If you don't want to use install Bower, you can copy built JS files from the bower-js-stellar-sdk repo.

To use the cdnjs hosted script in the browser

1. Instruct the browser to fetch the library from cdnjs, a 3rd party service that hosts js libraries:

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/stellar-sdk/{version}/stellar-sdk.js"></script>
<script>
  console.log(StellarSdk);
</script>

Note that this method relies using a third party to host the JS library. This may not be entirely secure.

Make sure that you are using the latest version number. They can be found on the releases page in Github.

To develop and test js-stellar-sdk itself

1. Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/stellar/js-stellar-sdk.git

2. Install dependencies inside js-stellar-sdk folder:

cd js-stellar-sdk
npm install

3. Install Node 6.14.0

Because we support earlier versions of Node, please install and develop on Node 6.14.0 so you don't get surprised when your code works locally but breaks in CI.

Here's out to install nvm if you haven't: https://github.com/creationix/nvm

nvm install

# if you've never installed 6.14.0 before you'll want to re-install yarn
npm install -g yarn

If you work on several projects that use different Node versions, you might it helpful to install this automatic version manager: https://github.com/wbyoung/avn

4. Observe the project's code style

While you're making changes, make sure to run the linter-watcher to catch any
   linting errors (in addition to making sure your text editor supports ESLint)

```shell
node_modules/.bin/gulp watch

If you're working on a file not in src, limit your code to Node 6.16 ES! See what's supported here: https://node.green/ (The reason is that our npm library must support earlier versions of Node, so the tests need to run on those versions.)

Usage

For information on how to use js-stellar-sdk, take a look at the Developers site.

There is also API Documentation here.

Testing

To run all tests:

gulp test

To run a specific set of tests:

gulp test:node
gulp test:browser

To generate and check the documentation site:

# install the `serve` command if you don't have it already
npm install -g serve

# generate the docs files
npm run docs

# get these files working in a browser
cd jsdoc && serve .

# you'll be able to browse the docs at http://localhost:5000

Documentation

Documentation for this repo lives in Developers site.

Contributing

For information on how to contribute, please refer to our contribution guide.

Publishing to npm

npm version [<newversion> | major | minor | patch | premajor | preminor | prepatch | prerelease]

A new version will be published to npm and Bower by Travis CI.

npm >=2.13.0 required. Read more about npm version.

License

js-stellar-sdk is licensed under an Apache-2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.