JSON-RPC commands

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Used for applications running on the same system as CLN.

Using lightning-cli

Core Lightning exposes a JSON-RPC 2.0 interface over a Unix Domain socket; the lightning-cli tool can be used to access it, or there is a python client library.

You can use [lightning-cli](ref:lightning-cli) help to print a table of RPC methods; [lightning-cli](lightning-cli) help <command> will offer specific information on that command.

Useful commands:

• lightning-newaddr: get a bitcoin address to deposit funds into your lightning node.
• lightning-listfunds: see where your funds are.
• lightning-connect: connect to another lightning node.
• lightning-fundchannel: create a channel to another connected node.
• lightning-invoice: create an invoice to get paid by another node.
• lightning-pay: pay someone else's invoice.
• lightning-plugin: commands to control extensions.

A complete list of all JSON-RPC commands is available at API Reference.

Using Python

pyln-client is a python client library for lightningd, that implements the Unix socket based JSON-RPC protocol. It can be used to call arbitrary functions on the RPC interface, and serves as a basis for applications or plugins written in python.

Installation

pyln-client is available on pip:

pip install pyln-client

Alternatively you can also install the development version to get access to currently unreleased features by checking out the Core Lightning source code and installing into your python3 environment:

git clone https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning.git
cd lightning/contrib/pyln-client
poetry install

This will add links to the library into your environment so changing the checked out source code will also result in the environment picking up these changes. Notice however that unreleased versions may change API without warning, so test thoroughly with the released version.

Tutorials

Check out the following recipes to learn how to use pyln-client in your applications.

Using Rust

cln-rpc is a Rust-based crate for lightningd, that implements the Unix socket based JSON-RPC protocol. It can be used to call arbitrary functions on the RPC interface, and serves as a basis for applications or plugins written in Rust.

Installation

Run the following Cargo command in your project directory:

cargo add cln-rpc

Or add the following line to your Cargo.toml:

cln-rpc = "0.1.2"

Documentation for the cln-rpc crate is available at https://docs.rs/cln-rpc/.