ILP

The Javascript client library for Interledger

The ILP module includes:

• Simple Payment Setup Protocol (SPSP), a higher level interface for sending ILP payments, which requires the receiver to have an SPSP server.
• Interledger Dynamic Configuration Protocol (ILDCP), a protocol for exchanging configuration between nodes.
• STREAM, the recommended Transport Protocol to use for most Interledger applications.
• createLogger, a function to create a name spaced logger.
• createMiddleware, a function to create server middleware for an SPSP receiver.
• createPlugin, a function to get an ILP plugin from the environment or testnet.
• receive, a function to create an invoice representing a handle to a STREAM server waiting to receive a specific amount.
• pay, a function to make a STREAM payment to either a Payment Pointer or an ILP Address using appropriate shared secret.

Installation

npm install --save ilp

Note that ilp plugins must be installed alongside this module unless you simply use BTP

Create Plugin

Using ilp.createPlugin is an alias for the deprecated ilp-plugin module. It creates an instance of a BTP plugin that will attempt to connect to a local moneyd instance by default. This can be overridden using environment variables.

The module looks for ILP_PLUGIN_OPTIONS (or ILP_CREDENTIALS however this is deprecated) and ILP_PLUGIN. ILP_PLUGIN_OPTIONS must contain a JSON object and will be passed into the constructor of a new plugin instance. The name of the plugin type to instantiate must be stored as a string in the environment variable ILP_PLUGIN or it will default to ilp-plugin-btp.

By default (i.e. ILP_PLUGIN_OPTIONS and ILP_PLUGIN are not set), a random secret will be generated and a new instance of ilp-plugin-btp will be configured to connect to btp+ws://localhost:7768.

Simple Payment Setup Protocol (SPSP)

If you are sending to an SPSPv4 receiver using a Payment Pointer, the SPSP module provides a high-level interface to pay and query the server:

'use strict'

const ilp = require('ilp')

;(async function () {
  await ilp.SPSP.pay(ilp.createPlugin(), {
    receiver: '$bob.example.com',
    sourceAmount: '1000'
  })
})()

ilp.SPSP replaces the deprecated ilp-protocol-spsp module and no longer supports payments to servers using PSK2. Only responses from an SPSP server with the content-type of application/spsp4+json are accepted.

Create Middleware

The ilp module provides conveniences functions to create server middleware that can be used to host an SPSP endpoint for receiving payments.

Express example:

 const ilp = require('ilp')
 const app = require('express')()

 ;(async () => {
  const spsp = await ilp.express.createMiddleware({receiver_info:{name: 'Bob Smith'}})
  app.get('/.well-known/pay', spsp)
  app.listen(3000)
 })()

KOA and HAPI support to come...

Interledger Dynamic Configuration Protocol (ILDCP)

The ILDCP module allows clients to get their configured address, asset and scale from an upstream parent connector.

'use strict'

const ilp = require('ilp')

;(async function () {
  const plugin = ilp.createPlugin()
  await plugin.connect()
  const { clientAddress, assetScale, assetCode } = await ilp.ILDCP.fetch(plugin.sendData.bind(plugin))
  console.log(`Plugin connected and configured with address ${clientAddress} using asset ${assetCode} and scale ${assetScale}`)
})()

STREAM

The STREAM module provides an API to use the STREAM protocol to send and receive payments. STREAM is the recommended transport protocol for use with ILP.

The ilp module provides two abstractions over this module that make it simple to send and receive payments.

Receive

receive creates an instance of a STREAM server wrapped around a given plugin (or calls createPlugin if none is provided). It returns an Invoice object which has an address and secret that can be shared with a sender, and a receivePayment() method to wait for the incoming payment.

Pay

pay will either pay a valid SPSP receiver or an ILP address (assuming there is a STREAM server waiting for connections at that address).

To pay using an SPSP receiver, pass the payment pointer as the payee in the form of a string:

'use strict'

const ilp = require('ilp')

;(async function () {
  await ilp.pay(100, '$bob.example.com')
})()

To pay using a given ILP Address and shared secret pass these in as an object:

'use strict'

const ilp = require('ilp')

;(async function () {
  await ilp.pay(100, { destinationAccount: 'g.bob.1234', sharedSecret: Buffer.from('******', 'base64') })
})()

Examples are provided in example.js.