nostr-protocol/nips

Developer docs?

Leichesters opened this issue · 7 comments

Leichesters commented

I wanted to build a project using Nostr but cant find docs for it. Having specifications is good but how do I start? Do you have a beginner friendly tutorial or some documentation?

For example here are some questions I have:

  • Where do I send the request?
  • How should I send it? In JSON?
  • Can I send it from everywhere? Even from my browser in the developer tools for example?

Thanks for your help

AveragePythonEnjoyer29 commented
  1. To the relay
  2. Most libraries don't require you to do all the JSON stuff manually, see python-nostr for example:
import json 
import ssl
import time
from nostr.event import Event
from nostr.relay_manager import RelayManager
from nostr.message_type import ClientMessageType
from nostr.key import PrivateKey

relay_manager = RelayManager()
relay_manager.add_relay("wss://nostr-pub.wellorder.net")
relay_manager.add_relay("wss://relay.damus.io")
relay_manager.open_connections({"cert_reqs": ssl.CERT_NONE}) # NOTE: This disables ssl certificate verification
time.sleep(1.25) # allow the connections to open

private_key = PrivateKey()

event = Event("Hello Nostr")
private_key.sign_event(event)

relay_manager.publish_event(event)
time.sleep(1) # allow the messages to send

relay_manager.close_connections()
  1. Yes, Nostr has some Javascript libraries avaliable
eskema commented
  • Where do I send the request?

requests are sent to relays via WebSocket, so we refer to them as a WebSocket URL, i.e var relay = new WebSocket('wss://relay.com')

  • How should I send it? In JSON?

a request is a stringified array, i.e. relay.send(JSON.stringify(['REQ','sub_id',{filter},{filter}]))

  • Can I send it from everywhere? Even from my browser in the developer tools for example?

yes

wanacode commented

This is a good place to start for building a web client:
https://github.com/nbd-wtf/nostr-tools

Otherwise a lot of resources can be found here:
https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr

Leichesters commented

Hey thanks for your help. I was wondering how do you tell other servers about your data? Do you have to send it to multiple servers or will they forward it for you? Also is there a Javascript / Dart library available?

wanacode commented

Yes, send it to multiple servers.

To publish something, you write a post, sign it with your key and send it to multiple relays.

The original protocol description says relays don't talk to other relays, but I believe some relays do talk to each other now.

For libraries see https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr