A high-level developer friendly interface to interact with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network (prototype stage)

• mainnet-js
• Contents
• Before you begin
  • Unstable
  • What is exactly is this?
  • How can I use it?
  • Where can't mainnet-js be used? (for now)
  • Finally, Check Your Node Version First
• Installation
  • As a REST service
  • For webapps & nodejs
  • REST clients for other languages
• Overview of packages
• Documentation
• Contributing

Mainnet-js provides a developer friendly API to develop BCH applications.

It is an OpenAPI 3 specification (swagger), implemented as a library in typescript. That library is then used in a generated express server to provide a REST service. And that service can be deployed in a production stack via docker.

The rest service can be called as a REST api from any language that can POST and receive json. Additionally, client libraries can be generated automatically if preferred in most common languages. You don't need to write javascript or typescript to use mainnet.

However, the typescript library is also compiled for use directly in nodejs, or as ECMA script for webapps, or as a webpack bundle for use from a single file.

So it can be used in the browser, nodejs, electrum apps, WebWorkers and the like.

The core bitcoin library is @bitauth/libauth which provides fast battle-tested crypto related functions using wasm binaries in WebAssembly.

For the above reason, mainnet-js is not well suited for use as a javascript library supporting a React-Native or Vue-Native app, as the JSC for iOS and Android do not support WebAssembly, at the time of writing (It may be possible with WebView, but with tradeoffs). Nor is it suitable for KaiOS devices below v3, for the same reason.

mainnet is currently developed and tested node v14, if your node version is very old or very new, you may have issues getting started. Check the nodejs version first.

Perhaps try nvm to experiment if your issue occurs with different versions of node.

To run the rest service under docker (recommended) use:

docker pull mainnet/mainnet-rest
docker run -d --env WORKERS=5 -p 127.0.0.1:3000:80 mainnet/mainnet-rest

See the full documentation for more installation and configuration details.

To install mainnet as a dependency of your webapp use:

yarn add mainnet-js

To include contracts functionality, use the following packages:

yarn add @mainnet-cash/contract

See the full documentation for notes and examples for bundling mainnet-js in your project.

It may be possible to use a generated client in your preferred programming language to interact with your REST service.

Client libraries are pre-built and available in python, php and golang.

If you have docker installed, you can generate clients in a particular language from the project folder using:

yarn api:build:client <generator_name>

For a list of generators see:

https://openapi-generator.tech/docs/generators/

If you need additionalProperties passed to the client generator, these may be added in the wrapper script

This project contains a number of smaller projects in a mono-repo structure, with each package located in the packages folder.

Tutorials are available for both REST and javascript at mainnet.cash

Additionally, a live version of the current REST api is available for viewing at rest-unstable.mainnet.cash

Please see the contributing guide for more detailed information.