Web Interface Testing Environment for the c-lightning implementation of Bitcoin Lightning Network
WARNING: still in very experimental early development stage, use on testnet ONLY
- A Bitcoin full node (see this guide for Raspberry Pi)
- A Lightning Network full node (install c-lightning following this guide)
- Install the following packages, for example:
apt-get install python3 python3-pip libopenjp2-7 libtiff5 libjpeg-dev zlib1g-dev
- Then use pip3 to install flask and qrcode:
sudo pip3 install flask
sudo pip3 install flask_qrcode
- Switch to the user that can run command line c-lightning commands. For example, assuming that user is "lightning":
sudo su - lightning - Clone the source code:
git clone https://github.com/davidepatti/gottalight.git - Execute the gottalight server:
python3 gottalight.py
Now c-lightning API and functionalities will be available via URLs by connecting with browswer to the port 5000 of your node.
TIP: some JSON visualization helper could be useful when formatting the server response. For example something like JSONView extension (for Chrome) or similar. Please notice that Mozilla Firefox doesn't require such tip.
In order to acces the web server, port 5000 of your node should be open. The simplest (and dangerous!) solution could be just to open such port to every connection:
sudo ufw allow from any to any proto tcp port 5000
IMPORTANT: A best approach should be to restrict the connection to only some particular clients. For example, connect only from nodes in a 192.168.1.x local network:
sudo ufw allow from 192.168.1.0/24 to any proto tcp port 5000
TIP: Even if the gottalight server is made accessible from local network addresses only, you could still access it by making a tunnel with ssh. Just follow these simple steps:
-
let's assume that your lighning node has address 192.168.1.114 and that the local network is connected to the internet using a router which has and external address public_address_of_your_router.
-
Configure the router so that port 8022 is forwarded to the port 22 (ssh) of the lighning node 192.168.1.114.
-
Then, from another an external machine type to estabilish an ssh tunnel:
ssh -D 8192 -N youruser@public_address_of_router -p 8022
- Finally, use Mozilla Firefox to access http://public_address_of_your_router:5000 , after setting localhost:8192 as proxy in the Network Settings (please note that this is not possible with Chrome or other).