Helpcore Node

A Help full node for building applications and services with Node.js. A node is extensible and can be configured to run additional services. At the minimum a node has an interface to Help Core (helpd) v0.13.0 for more advanced address queries. Additional services can be enabled to make a node more useful such as exposing new APIs, running a block explorer and wallet service.

Usages

As a standalone server

git clone https://github.com/gohelpfund/helpcore-node
cd helpcore-node
npm install
./bin/helpcore-node start

When running the start command, it will seek for a .helpcore folder with a helpcore-node.json conf file. If it doesn't exist, it will create it, with basic task to connect to helpd.

Some plugins are available :

• Insight-API : ./bin/helpcore-node addservice @gohelpfund/insight-api
• Insight-UI : ./bin/helpcore-node addservice @gohelpfund/insight-ui

You also might want to add these index to your help.conf file :

-addressindex
-timestampindex
-spentindex

As a library

npm install @gohelpfund/helpcore-node

const helpcore = require('@gohelpfund/helpcore-node');
const config = require('./helpcore-node.json');

let node = helpcore.scaffold.start({ path: "", config: config });
node.on('ready', function() {
    //Help core started
    helpd.on('tx', function(txData) {
        let tx = new helpcore.lib.Transaction(txData);
    });
});

Prerequisites

• Help Core (helpd) (v0.13.0) with support for additional indexing (see above)
• Node.js v8+
• ZeroMQ (libzmq3-dev for Ubuntu/Debian or zeromq on OSX)
• ~20GB of disk storage
• ~1GB of RAM

Configuration

Helpcore includes a Command Line Interface (CLI) for managing, configuring and interfacing with your Helpcore Node.

helpcore-node create -d <help-data-dir> mynode
cd mynode
helpcore-node install <service>
helpcore-node install https://github.com/yourname/helloworld
helpcore-node start

This will create a directory with configuration files for your node and install the necessary dependencies.

Please note that Help Core needs to be installed first.

For more information about (and developing) services, please see the Service Documentation.

Add-on Services

There are several add-on services available to extend the functionality of Bitcore:

• Insight API
• Insight UI
• Bitcore Wallet Service

Documentation

• Upgrade Notes
• Services
  • Helpd - Interface to Help Core
  • Web - Creates an express application over which services can expose their web/API content
• Development Environment - Guide for setting up a development environment
• Node - Details on the node constructor
• Bus - Overview of the event bus constructor
• Release Process - Information about verifying a release and the release process.

Setting up dev environment (with Insight)

Prerequisite : Having a helpd node already runing helpd --daemon.

Helpcore-node : git clone https://github.com/gohelpfund/helpcore-node -b develop Insight-api (optional) : git clone https://github.com/gohelpfund/insight-api -b develop Insight-UI (optional) : git clone https://github.com/gohelpfund/insight-ui -b develop

Install them :

cd helpcore-node && npm install \
 && cd ../insight-ui && npm install \
 && cd ../insight-api && npm install && cd ..

Symbolic linking in parent folder :

npm link ../insight-api
npm link ../insight-ui

Start with ./bin/helpcore-node start to first generate a ~/.helpcore/helpcore-node.json file. Append this file with "@gohelpfund/insight-ui" and "@gohelpfund/insight-api" in the services array.

Contributing

Please send pull requests for bug fixes, code optimization, and ideas for improvement. For more information on how to contribute, please refer to our CONTRIBUTING file.

License

Code released under the MIT license.

Copyright 2016-2018 Help Core Group, Inc.

• bitcoin: Copyright (c) 2009-2015 Bitcoin Core Developers (MIT License)