Core Command

A suite of CI/CD friendly tools that plug into bitcoin core.

This library is designed for writing test cases that interact with the bitcoin blockchain.

How to Install

# Using NPM
npm i --save-dev @cmdcode/core-cmd
# Using Yarn
yarn add --dev @cmdcode/core-cmd

How to Use

The CoreDaemon class is designed to connect to an existing core node, or spawn a new one.

By default, the startup script will search for a running process of bitcoind or bitcoin-qt, and connect to it.

If no bitcoin core process is running, the startup script will spawn a new one.

The shutdown script will gracefully shut down any bitcoin core process started by the startup script. It will not affect any existing running process of bitcoin core.

import { CoreDaemon } from '@cmdcode/core-cmd'

const config : {
  cookiepath  ?: string    // Path to your cookie file (if different than datapath).
  corepath    ?: string    // Path to your bitcoind binary (if not available in PATH).
  clipath     ?: string    // Path to your bitcoin-cli (if not available in PATH).
  confpath    ?: string    // Path to your bitcoin.conf file (if exists).
  datapath    ?: string    // Path to your bitcoin data directory.
  params      ?: string[]  // Additional params to use when starting bitcoind and bitcoin-cli.
  core_params ?: string[]  // Additional params to use when starting bitcoind.
  cli_params  ?: string[]  // Additional params to use when starting bitcoin-cli.
  debug       ?: boolean   // Provides addition console output for debugging.
  isolated    ?: boolean   // Starts bitcoind with random ports so it doesn't conflict with an existing process.
  network     ?: string    // Network to use (default is regetest).
  throws      ?: boolean   // Ensure client and core process always throws an exception on error.
  verbose     ?: boolean   // Provides additional verbosity to console output.
} = {}

// Create a new daemon instance (with optional config).
const core = new CoreDaemon(config)

The basic way to run a script through bitcoin core is to use the startup and shutdown methods. These methods help ensure that bitcoin core is cleaned up properly once the test completes.

const core   = new CoreDaemon({ datapath: `${process.env.HOME}/.bitcoin` })
const client = await core.startup()

console.log(await client.get_info)
core.shutdown()

To auto-magically wrap your code with startup and shutdown, you can use the run method.

The run method will take any number of callback methods, and pass a CoreClient object into each one.

await core.run(async (client : CoreClient) => {
  // Load a wallet for Alice and generate an address.
  const alice_wallet = await client.get_wallet('alice_wallet')
  const alice_recv   = await alice_wallet.newaddress
  console.log('receive address:', alice_recv.address)
  // Create a tx template that pays to Alice.
  const template = {
    vout : [{
      value : 800_000,
      scriptPubKey : alice_recv.scriptPubKey
    }]
  }
  // Load a wallet for Bob and ensure it has funds.
  const bob_wallet = await client.get_wallet('bob_wallet')
  await bob_wallet.ensure_funds(1_000_000)
  // Fund the tx from Alice using Bob's wallet
  const txdata = await bob_wallet.fund_tx(template)
  // Print the txdata to console.
  console.log('txdata:', txdata)
  // Publish the tx.
  const txid = await client.publish_tx(txdata)
  // Mine a few blocks to confirm the tx.
  await client.mine_blocks(1)
  // Print the txid to console.
  console.log('txid:', txid)
})

For better flow control, you may want to use the ready event to execute code.

The ready event will emit after a sucessful run of the startup script.

// When core is started, it will emit a 'ready' event with a client object.
core.on('ready', async (client) => {
  // You can use the client to run commands.
  console.log(await client.cmd('getblockchaininfo'))
  // The client can load/create a wallet.
  const wallet = await client.get_wallet('test_wallet')
  // You can use the wallet to perform wallet-specific features.
  const addr = await wallet.newaddress
  console.log('addr:', addr)
  // Once your script is finished, you can gracefully shut down the daemon.
  await core.shutdown()
})
// To kick-off the above logic, start up core.
await core.startup()

CI/CD Testing

The included test and .github folders are a showcase and example of how to use this library with github actions.

The example test located in test/src/base.test.ts uses a basic testing library called tape.

Feel free to copy this code and apply it to your own testing framework and CI/CD pipeline.

Bugs / Issues

Please post any questions or bug reports on the issues page.

There will likely be a number of cross-platform issues since I only have access to a linux machine for development. I will greatly appreciate any help and feedback from devs running into issues on Windows and OSX!

Development & Testing

This project uses typescript for development and tape for testing.

yarn install && yarn test
npm  install && npm run test

Contributions

All contributions are welcome!

License

Use this code however you like! No warranty!