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

It provides:

• a networking layer API for Horizon endpoints (REST-based) and Soroban RPC (JSON-RPC-based).
• 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 and Soroban RPC, while 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.

Important! The Node.js version of the stellar-base (stellar-sdk dependency) package uses the sodium-native package as an optional dependency. sodium-native is a low level binding to libsodium, (an implementation of Ed25519 signatures). If installation of sodium-native fails, or it is unavailable, stellar-base (and stellar-sdk) will fallback to using the tweetnacl package implementation.

If you are using stellar-sdk/stellar-base in a browser you can ignore this. However, for production backend deployments you should be using sodium-native. If sodium-native is successfully installed and working the StellarSdk.FastSigning variable will return true.

Quick start

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

npm install --save @stellar/stellar-sdk

Alternatively, you can use cdnjs in a browser:

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/stellar-sdk/{version}/stellar-sdk.js"></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/stellar-sdk');
// or
import * as StellarSdk from '@stellar/stellar-sdk';

To self host for use in the browser

1. Install it using bower:

bower install @stellar/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 or 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
yarn

3. Install Node 18

Because we support the oldest maintenance version of Node, please install and develop on Node 18 so you don't get surprised when your code works locally but breaks in CI.

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

nvm install

# if you've never installed 16 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 to catch any linting errors (in addition to making sure your text editor supports ESLint)

yarn fmt

Usage

For information on how to use js-stellar-sdk, take a look at the documentation, or the examples.

There is also Horizon REST API Documentation here and Soroban JSON-RPC documentation here.

Usage with React-Native

1. Install yarn add --dev rn-nodeify
2. Add the following postinstall script:

yarn rn-nodeify --install url,events,https,http,util,stream,crypto,vm,buffer --hack --yarn

3. Uncomment require('crypto') on shim.js
4. react-native link react-native-randombytes
5. Create file rn-cli.config.js

module.exports = {
  resolver: {
    extraNodeModules: require("node-libs-react-native"),
  },
};

6. Add import "./shim"; to the top of index.js
7. yarn add @stellar/stellar-sdk

There is also a sample that you can follow.

Using in an Expo managed workflow

1. Install yarn add --dev rn-nodeify
2. Add the following postinstall script:

yarn rn-nodeify --install process,url,events,https,http,util,stream,crypto,vm,buffer --hack --yarn

3. Add import "./shim"; to the your app's entry point (by default ./App.js)
4. yarn add @stellar/stellar-sdk
5. expo install expo-random

At this point, the Stellar SDK will work, except that StellarSdk.Keypair.random() will throw an error. To work around this, you can create your own method to generate a random keypair like this:

import * as Random from 'expo-random';
import StellarSdk from '@stellar/stellar-sdk';

const generateRandomKeypair = () => {
  const randomBytes = Random.getRandomBytes(32);

  return StellarSdk.Keypair.fromRawEd25519Seed(Buffer.from(randomBytes));
};

Testing

To run all tests:

yarn test

To run a specific set of tests:

yarn test:node
yarn 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
yarn 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 and Publishing

For information on how to contribute or publish new versions of this software to npm, please refer to our contribution guide.

License

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