Solana node helpers

The node-helpers package package contains node.js specific Solana helper functions.

See @solana/web3.js for functions that work in both the browser and node.js.

Installation

npm i @solana-developers/node-helpers

getKeypairFromFile()

Gets a keypair from a file - the format must be the same as Solana CLI uses, ie, a JSON array of numbers:

To load the default keypair ~/.config/solana/id.json, just run:

const keyPair = await getKeypairFromFile();

or to load a specific file:

const keyPair = await getKeypairFromFile("somefile.json");

or using home dir expansion:

const keyPair = await getKeypairFromFile("~/code/solana/demos/steve.json");

getKeypairFromEnvironment()

Gets a keypair from a secret key stored in an environment variable. This is typically used to load secret keys from env files.

const keyPair = await getKeypairFromEnvironment("SECRET_KEY");

addKeypairToEnvFile()

Saves a keypair to the environment file.

await addKeypairToEnvFile(testKeypair, "SECRET_KEY");

or to specify a file name:

await addKeypairToEnvFile(testKeypair, "SECRET_KEY", ".env.local");

This will also reload the env file

Secret key format

Secret keys can be read in either the more compact base58 format (base58.encode(randomKeypair.secretKey);), like:

# A random secret key for demo purposes
SECRET_KEY=QqKYBnj5mcgUsS4vrCeyMczbTyV1SMrr7SjSAPj7JGFtxfrgD8AWU8NciwHNCbmkscbvj4HdeEen42GDBSHCj1N

Or the longer, 'array of numbers' format JSON.stringify(Object.values(randomKeypair.secretKey));:

# A random secret key for demo purposes
SECRET_KEY=[112,222,91,246,55,109,221,4,23,148,251,127,212,180,44,249,182,139,18,13,209,208,6,7,193,210,186,249,148,237,237,1,70,118,1,153,238,134,239,75,187,96,101,138,147,130,181,71,22,82,44,217,194,122,59,208,134,119,98,53,136,108,44,105]

We always save keys using the 'array of numbers' format, since most other Solana apps (like the CLI SDK and Rust tools) use the 'array of numbers' format.

Development

To run tests

npm run test

The tests use the node native test runner.