Get Started with RippleAPI for Node.js

This tutorial guides you through the basics of building an XRP Ledger-connected application using Node.js and RippleAPI, a JavaScript API for accessing the XRP Ledger. You can also use RippleAPI straight from your browser.

The scripts and config files used in this guide are available in the Ripple Dev Portal GitHub Repository .

Environment Setup

The first step to using RippleAPI is setting up your development environment.

Install Node.js and npm

RippleAPI is built as an application for the Node.js runtime environment, so the first step is getting Node.js installed. RippleAPI requires Node.js v6 or higher. Ripple recommends using Node.js v10 LTS.

This step depends on your operating system. Ripple recommends using the official instructions for installing Node.js using a package manager for your operating system. If the packages for Node.js and npm (Node Package Manager) are separate, install both. (This applies to Arch Linux, CentOS, Fedora, and RHEL.)

After you have installed Node.js, you can check the version of the node binary from a command line:

node --version

On some platforms, the binary is named nodejs instead:

nodejs --version

Install Yarn

RippleAPI uses Yarn to manage dependencies. Ripple recommends using Yarn v1.13.0.

This step depends on your operating system. Ripple recommends using the official instructions for installing Yarn using a package manager for your operating system.

After you have installed Yarn, you can check the version of the yarn binary from a command line:

yarn --version

Install RippleAPI and Dependencies

Complete these steps to use Yarn to install RippleAPI and dependencies.

1. Create a new directory for your project

Create a folder called (for example) my_ripple_experiment:

mkdir my_ripple_experiment && cd my_ripple_experiment

Optionally, start a Git repository in that directory so you can track changes to your code.

git init

Alternatively, you can create a repo on GitHub to version and share your work. After setting it up, clone the repo to your local machine and cd into that directory.

2. Create a new package.json file for your project

Use the following template, which includes:

  • RippleAPI itself (ripple-lib)
  • (Optional) ESLint (eslint) for checking code quality.
{
  "name": "my_ripple_experiment",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "license": "MIT",
  "private": true,
  "//": "Change the license to something appropriate. You may want to use 'UNLICENSED' if you are just starting out.",
  "dependencies": {
    "ripple-lib": "*"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "eslint": "*"
  }
}

3. Use Yarn to install RippleAPI and dependencies

Use Yarn to install RippleAPI and the dependencies defined in the package.json file you created for your project.

yarn

This installs RippleAPI and the dependencies into the local folder node_modules/.

The install process may end with a few warnings. You may safely ignore the following warnings:

warning eslint > file-entry-cache > flat-cache > circular-json@0.3.3: CircularJSON is in maintenance only, flatted is its successor.

npm WARN optional Skipping failed optional dependency /chokidar/fsevents:

npm WARN notsup Not compatible with your operating system or architecture: fsevents@1.0.6

First RippleAPI Script

This script, get-account-info.js, fetches information about a hard-coded account. Use it to test that RippleAPI works:

'use strict';
const RippleAPI = require('ripple-lib').RippleAPI;

const api = new RippleAPI({
  server: 'wss://s1.ripple.com' // Public rippled server
});
api.connect().then(() => {
  /* begin custom code ------------------------------------ */
  const myAddress = 'rf1BiGeXwwQoi8Z2ueFYTEXSwuJYfV2Jpn';

  console.log('getting account info for', myAddress);
  return api.getAccountInfo(myAddress);

}).then(info => {
  console.log(info);
  console.log('getAccountInfo done');

  /* end custom code -------------------------------------- */
}).then(() => {
  return api.disconnect();
}).then(() => {
  console.log('done and disconnected.');
}).catch(console.error);

Run the Script

Run your first RippleAPI script using this command:

node get-account-info.js

Output:

getting account info for rf1BiGeXwwQoi8Z2ueFYTEXSwuJYfV2Jpn
{ sequence: 359,
  xrpBalance: '75.181663',
  ownerCount: 4,
  previousInitiatedTransactionID: 'E5C6DD25B2DCF534056D98A2EFE3B7CFAE4EBC624854DE3FA436F733A56D8BD9',
  previousAffectingTransactionID: 'E5C6DD25B2DCF534056D98A2EFE3B7CFAE4EBC624854DE3FA436F733A56D8BD9',
  previousAffectingTransactionLedgerVersion: 18489336 }
getAccountInfo done
done and disconnected.

Understand the Script

In addition to RippleAPI-specific code, this script uses syntax and conventions that are recent developments in JavaScript. Let's divide the sample code into smaller chunks to explain each one.

Script opening

'use strict';
const RippleAPI = require('ripple-lib').RippleAPI;

The opening line enables strict mode . This is purely optional, but it helps you avoid some common pitfalls of JavaScript.

The second line imports RippleAPI into the current scope using Node.js's require function. RippleAPI is one of the modules ripple-lib exports .

Instantiating the API

const api = new RippleAPI({
  server: 'wss://s1.ripple.com' // Public rippled server
});

This section creates a new instance of the RippleAPI class, assigning it to the variable api. (The const keyword means you can't reassign the value api to some other value. The internal state of the object can still change, though.)

The one argument to the constructor is an options object, which has a variety of options. The server parameter tells it where it should connect to a rippled server.

  • The example server setting uses a secure WebSocket connection to connect to one of the public servers that Ripple (the company) runs.
  • If you don't include the server option, RippleAPI runs in offline mode instead, which only provides methods that don't need network connectivity.
  • You can specify a XRP Ledger Test Net server instead to connect to the parallel-world Test Network instead of the production XRP Ledger.
  • If you run your own rippled, you can instruct it to connect to your local server. For example, you might say server: 'ws://localhost:5005' instead.

Connecting and Promises

api.connect().then(() => {

The connect() method is one of many RippleAPI methods that returns a Promise , which is a special kind of JavaScript object. A Promise is designed to do an asynchronous operation that returns a value later, such as querying the XRP Ledger.

When you get a Promise back from some expression (like api.connect()), you call the Promise's then method and pass in a callback function. Passing a function as an argument is conventional in JavaScript, taking advantage of how JavaScript functions are first-class objects .

When a Promise finishes with its asynchronous operations, the Promise runs the callback function you passed it. The return value from the then method is another Promise object, so you can "chain" that into another then method, or the Promise's catch method, which also takes a callback. The callback you pass to catch gets called if something goes wrong.

The example uses arrow function , a shorter way of defining anonymous functions. This is convenient for defining lots of one-off functions as callbacks. The syntax ()=> {...} is mostly equivalent to function() {...}. If you want an anonymous function with one parameter, you can use a syntax like info => {...} instead, which is almost the same as function(info) {...} syntax.

Custom code

  /* begin custom code ------------------------------------ */
  const myAddress = 'rf1BiGeXwwQoi8Z2ueFYTEXSwuJYfV2Jpn';

  console.log('getting account info for', myAddress);
  return api.getAccountInfo(myAddress);

}).then(info => {
  console.log(info);
  console.log('getAccountInfo done');

  /* end custom code -------------------------------------- */

This is the part that you change to do whatever you want the script to do.

The example code looks up an XRP Ledger account by its address. Try running the code with different addresses to see different results.

The console.log() function is built into both Node.js and web browsers, and writes out to the console. This example includes lots of console output to make it easier to understand what the code is doing.

Keep in mind that the example code starts in the middle of a callback function (called when RippleAPI finishes connecting). That function calls RippleAPI's getAccountInfo method, and returns the results.

The getAccountInfo API method returns another Promise, so the line }).then( info => { defines another anonymous callback function to run when this Promise's asynchronous work is done. Unlike the previous case, this callback function takes one argument, called info, which holds the asynchronous return value from the getAccountInfo API method. The rest of this callback function outputs that return value to the console.

Cleanup

}).then(() => {
  return api.disconnect();
}).then(() => {
  console.log('done and disconnected.');
}).catch(console.error);

The rest of the sample code is more standard setup code. The first line ends the previous callback function, then chains to another callback to run when it ends. That method disconnects cleanly from the XRP Ledger, and has yet another callback which writes to the console when it finishes. If your script waits on RippleAPI events, do not disconnect until you are done waiting for events.

The catch method ends this Promise chain. The callback provided here runs if any of the Promises or their callback functions encounters an error. In this case, we pass the standard console.error function, which writes to the console, instead of defining a custom callback. You could define a smarter callback function here to intelligently catch certain error types.

Waiting for Validation

One of the biggest challenges in using the XRP Ledger (or any decentralized system) is knowing the final, immutable transaction results. Even if you follow the best practices you still have to wait for the consensus process to finally accept or reject your transaction. The following example code demonstrates how to wait for the final outcome of a transaction:

'use strict';
/* import RippleAPI and support libraries */
const RippleAPI = require('ripple-lib').RippleAPI;

/* Credentials of the account placing the order */
const myAddr = 'rf1BiGeXwwQoi8Z2ueFYTEXSwuJYfV2Jpn';
const mySecret = 's████████████████████████████';

/* Define the order to place here */
const myOrder = {
  'direction': 'buy',
  'quantity': {
    'currency': 'FOO',
    'counterparty': 'rUpy3eEg8rqjqfUoLeBnZkscbKbFsKXC3v',
    'value': '100'
  },
  'totalPrice': {
    'currency': 'XRP',
    'value': '1000'
  }
};

/* Milliseconds to wait between checks for a new ledger. */
const INTERVAL = 1000;
/* Instantiate RippleAPI. Uses s2 (full history server) */
const api = new RippleAPI({server: 'wss://s2.ripple.com'});
/* Number of ledgers to check for valid transaction before failing */
const ledgerOffset = 5;
const myInstructions = {maxLedgerVersionOffset: ledgerOffset};


/* Verify a transaction is in a validated XRP Ledger version */
function verifyTransaction(hash, options) {
  console.log('Verifying Transaction');
  return api.getTransaction(hash, options).then(data => {
    console.log('Final Result: ', data.outcome.result);
    console.log('Validated in Ledger: ', data.outcome.ledgerVersion);
    console.log('Sequence: ', data.sequence);
    return data.outcome.result === 'tesSUCCESS';
  }).catch(error => {
    /* If transaction not in latest validated ledger,
       try again until max ledger hit */
    if (error instanceof api.errors.PendingLedgerVersionError) {
      return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        setTimeout(() => verifyTransaction(hash, options)
        .then(resolve, reject), INTERVAL);
      });
    }
    return error;
  });
}


/* Function to prepare, sign, and submit a transaction to the XRP Ledger. */
function submitTransaction(lastClosedLedgerVersion, prepared, secret) {
  const signedData = api.sign(prepared.txJSON, secret);
  return api.submit(signedData.signedTransaction).then(data => {
    console.log('Tentative Result: ', data.resultCode);
    console.log('Tentative Message: ', data.resultMessage);
    /* The tentative result should be ignored. Transactions that succeed here can ultimately fail,
       and transactions that fail here can ultimately succeed. */

    /* Begin validation workflow */
    const options = {
      minLedgerVersion: lastClosedLedgerVersion,
      maxLedgerVersion: prepared.instructions.maxLedgerVersion
    };
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      setTimeout(() => verifyTransaction(signedData.id, options)
    .then(resolve, reject), INTERVAL);
    });
  });
}


api.connect().then(() => {
  console.log('Connected');
  return api.prepareOrder(myAddr, myOrder, myInstructions);
}).then(prepared => {
  console.log('Order Prepared');
  return api.getLedger().then(ledger => {
    console.log('Current Ledger', ledger.ledgerVersion);
    return submitTransaction(ledger.ledgerVersion, prepared, mySecret);
  });
}).then(() => {
  api.disconnect().then(() => {
    console.log('api disconnected');
    process.exit();
  });
}).catch(console.error);

This code creates and submits an order transaction, although the same principles apply to other types of transactions as well. After submitting the transaction, the code uses a new Promise, which queries the ledger again after using setTimeout to wait a fixed amount of time, to see if the transaction has been verified. If it hasn't been verified, the process repeats until either the transaction is found in a validated ledger or the returned ledger is higher than the LastLedgerSequence parameter.

In rare cases (particularly with a large delay or a loss of power), the rippled server may be missing a ledger version between when you submitted the transaction and when you determined that the network has passed the maxLedgerVersion. In this case, you cannot be definitively sure whether the transaction has failed, or has been included in one of the missing ledger versions. RippleAPI returns MissingLedgerHistoryError in this case.

If you are the administrator of the rippled server, you can manually request the missing ledger(s). Otherwise, you can try checking the ledger history using a different server. (Ripple runs a public full-history server at s2.ripple.com for this purpose.)

See Reliable Transaction Submission for a more thorough explanation.

RippleAPI in Web Browsers

RippleAPI can also be used in a web browser. To access it, load Lodash and RippleAPI for JavaScript (ripple-lib) in your site's HTML. For example:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/lodash@4.17.20/lodash.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/ripple-lib@1.9.1/build/ripple-latest-min.js"></script>

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/lodash@4.17.20/lodash.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/ripple-lib@1.9.1/build/ripple-latest-min.js"></script>

Instead of using Node.js's "require" syntax, the browser version creates a global variable named ripple, which contains the RippleAPI class.

Build a Browser-Compatible Version of RippleAPI

You can also build a browser-compatible version of the code yourself. Use the following steps to build it from the source code.

1. Download a copy of the RippleAPI git repository

If you have Git installed, you can clone the repository and check out the master branch, which always has the latest official release:

git clone https://github.com/ripple/ripple-lib.git
cd ripple-lib
git checkout master

Alternatively, you can download an archive (.zip or .tar.gz) of a specific release from the RippleAPI releases page and extract it.

2. Install Yarn

Use these instructions to install Yarn.

3. Install dependencies using Yarn

yarn

4. Build with Yarn

RippleAPI comes with the necessary dependencies and code to build it for the browser. Trigger the build script as follows:

yarn run build

Output:

yarn run v1.22.4
$ yarn build:schemas && yarn build:lib && yarn build:web
$ mkdir -p dist/npm/common && cp -r src/common/schemas dist/npm/common/
$ tsc --build
$ webpack
Done in 10.29s.

This may take a while. At the end, the build process creates a new build/ folder, which contains the files you want.

The file build/ripple-latest.js is a direct export of RippleAPI (whatever version you built) ready to be used in browsers. The file ending in build/ripple-latest-min.js is the same thing, but with the content minified for faster loading.

Demo RippleAPI in a Browser

The following HTML file demonstrates basic usage of the browser version of RippleAPI to connect to a public rippled server and report information about that server.

browser-demo.html 

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lodash.js/4.17.21/lodash.min.js" integrity="sha512-WFN04846sdKMIP5LKNphMaWzU7YpMyCU245etK3g/2ARYbPK9Ub18eG+ljU96qKRCWh+quCY7yefSmlkQw1ANQ==" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
  <script type="application/javascript" src="assets/js/ripple-lib-1.9.1.min.js"></script>
  <script>
    console.log(ripple);
    var api = new ripple.RippleAPI({server:'wss://s1.ripple.com/'});
    api.connect().then(function() {
        return api.getServerInfo();
    }).then(function(server_info) {
    document.body.innerHTML += "<p>Connected to rippled server!</p>" +
"      <table>" +
"        <tr><th>Version</th>" +
"          <td>" + server_info.buildVersion + "</td></tr>" +
"        <tr><th>Ledgers available</th>" +
"          <td>" + server_info.completeLedgers + "</td></tr>" +
"        <tr><th>hostID</th>" +
"          <td>" + server_info.hostID + "</td></tr>" +
"        <tr><th>Most Recent Validated Ledger Seq.</th>" +
"          <td>" + server_info.validatedLedger.ledgerVersion + "</td></tr>" +
"        <tr><th>Most Recent Validated Ledger Hash</th>" +
"          <td>" + server_info.validatedLedger.hash + "</td></tr>" +
"        <tr><th>Seconds since last ledger validated</th>" +
"          <td>" + server_info.validatedLedger.age + "</td></tr>" +
"      </table>";
    });
  </script>
  <style type="text/css">
    td, th { border: 1px solid black; padding: 5px; }
    table { border-collapse: collapse; }
  </style>
</head>
<body></body>
</html>

You can also see and edit a similar, live browser demo on the Get Started page.

See Also