Request JS Library Documentation

Introduction

Welcome to the requestNetwork.js documentation! requestNetwork.js is a Javascript library for interacting with the Request Network protocol. Using the library you can create new requests from your applications, pay them, consult them or update them from your own off-chain applications.

If your application is decentralized and onchain on Ethereum, you can directly interact with our smart contracts. Smart contract documentation

Warning

This is still an alpha version which will evolve significantly before the main net release.

When developing you should know

Everything that is specified in the wiki.

Among other things, this documentation specifies the smart contract architecture, the different actions that can be done at specific times, the statuses, how to use the extensions, the fee management system, the cross currency feature, how to manage identity and what to expect from the reputation system.

Tutorials

No tutorials available yet. Feel free to suggest yours and we will refer to it. If you’re looking for an example, you can browse the app.request.network website and github

Installation

requestNetwork.js ships as a CommonJS package. CommonJS (recommended):

Install

Using NPM

npm install @requestnetwork/request-network.js --save

Using Yarn

yarn add @requestnetwork/request-network.js

(We are currently working on retrieving the name of requestnetwork.js)

Import

import RequestNetwork from '@requestnetwork/request-network.js/dist/src/requestNetwork';

Constructor

Default configuration (Infura and Rinkeby)

let requestNetwork = new RequestNetwork();

Custom configuration

let requestNetwork = new RequestNetwork(provider, networkId, useIpfsPublic);

Instantiates a new RequestNetwork instance that provides the public interface to the requestNetwork.js library.

@param provider The Web3.js Provider instance you would like the requestNetwork.js library to use for interacting with the Ethereum network.
@param networkId the Ethereum network ID.
@param useIpfsPublic use public ipfs node if true, private one specified in “src/config.json ipfs.nodeUrlDefault.private” otherwise
@return An instance of the requestNetwork.js RequestNetwork class.

Async

requestNetwork.js is a promise-based library. This means that whenever an asynchronous call is required, the library method will return a native Javascript promise. You can therefore choose between using promise or async/await syntax when calling our async methods.

Every function that modify data on the blockchain will trigger first an event “broadcasted” when the transaction is submitted to the nodes, before returning the request data when the transaction is confirmed. You can specify a number of confirmations to wait before returning the promise in options.numberOfConfirmation - default to 0.

Async/await syntax (recommended):

try {
  var data = await requestNetwork.requestEthereumService.accept(requestId).on(“broadcasted”, txHash => {
    //Transaction broadcasted
    console.log(“transaction hash: “, txHash);
  });
  //Transaction mined
  console.log(data.request)
} catch (error) {
  console.log('Caught error: ', error);
}

Promise syntax:

requestNetwork.requestEthereumService.accept(requestId).on(“broadcasted”, txHash => {
  //Transaction broadcasted
  console.log('Transaction hash: ', txHash);
}).then(data => {
  //Transaction mined
  console.log(data.request);
})
.catch(error => {
  console.log('Caught error: ', error);
});

As is the convention with promise-based libraries, if an error occurs, it is thrown. It is the callers responsibility to catch thrown errors and to handle them appropriately.

Versioning

The library adheres to the Semantic Versioning 2.0.0 specification. Note that major version zero (0.y.z) is for initial development. Anything may change at any time. The public API should not be considered stable since the library is still an alpha and we will introduce backward incompatible changes to the interface without incrementing the major version until the 1.0.0 release. Our convention until then will be to increment the minor version whenever we introduce backward incompatible changes to the public interface, and to increment the patch version otherwise. Functions

Functions

Create a request as the payee

` public createRequestAsPayee ( _payer: string, _amountInitial: any, _data ? : string, _extension ? : string, _extensionParams ? : Array < any >, _options ? : any)```