CoinJar API Starter Application in Node.js

Introduction

This is a simple application using the CoinJar API. This application is meant to be used as a starting place for those looking to Bitcoin solutions with the CoinJar merchant and user API.

Installation

Download and install Node.js

Next install the Node Package Manager (NPM), which is used to download your application's library dependencies

$ curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

Building the application

After you clone the project, cd into the working directory and use NPM to download dependencies and Grunt to build the application:

$ cd my/project/dir
$ git clone git@github.com:jimlyndon/CoinJarExampleNodeJS.git
$ cd CoinJarExampleNodeJS
$ npm install

API Key

Make sure you get an API key from CoinJar.io. First create an account - best to use the sandbox environment where you can send and receive fake bitcoins when starting out. To do this sign up for a Coinjar Sandbox account.

In your CoinJar sandbox account you can create a "bitcoin address" and send test bitcoin to this address from a Faucet. You can return to them some test bitcoin as well. You can create addresses under your account and send/receive bitcoin, this way you have some test transactional data to work with.

Finally you need to turn on your user API access by going to account settings -> API access -> Enable API. This will ask you for your credentials and display an API key.

If you're building a merchant application you will also need to retrieve your merchant id and key from your Sandbox account or from the live/production Coinjar website

Currently this application by default uses the authentication and merchant keys provided for example by the (CoinJar NPM)(https://npmjs.org/package/coinjar) library's test suite.

Finally, use any or all the API keys/tokens when initializing the CoinJar NPM client, in the file CoinJarExampleNodeJS/routes/index.js:

var coinjar = require('coinjar')
  , cj = new coinjar({
      auth_token: 'YOUR_USER_TOKEN',
      merchant_uuid: YOUR_MERCHANT_UUID, 
      merchant_secret: YOUR_MERCHANT_SECRET,
      sandbox: true
    })

The CoinJar NPM library also lets you use the following environment variables in lieu of declaring them in the index.js file:

$ export COINJAR_AUTH_TOKEN="YOUR_USER_TOKEN"
$ export COINJAR_MERCH_UUID="YOUR_MERCHANT_UUID"
$ export COINJAR_MERCH_SECRET="YOUR_MERCHANT_SECRET"

Running the web application

Now that your application is built and the API credentials have been set, you can run the application with:

$ node app.js

You should get the output: Express server listening on port 3000. And finally open a browser at http://localhost:3000/

Debugging the web application

If you wish to debug the application, you should install node inspector. Open a new terminal window/tab and run:

$ npm install -g node-inspector

Next, run node-inspector:

$ node-inspector &

You should get the output:

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8080/debug?port=5858 to start debugging.

Finally, in your web application's root directory execute Node with the debug flag

$ node --debug app.js

You should get the output:

debugger listening on port 5858
Express server listening on port 3000

You can open Chrome browser at http://127.0.0.1:8080/debug?port=5858 to use it's development tools to debug your application. Debugging will commence when you refresh the web app at http://localhost:3000/

Direct any issues/problems/questions/complaints @jimlyndon :)