LIGHTNING-INVOICE(7)
====================
:doctype: manpage

NAME
----
lightning-invoice - Protocol for accepting payments.

SYNOPSIS
--------
*invoice* 'msatoshi' 'label' 'description' ['expiry']

DESCRIPTION
-----------
The *invoice* RPC command creates the expectation of a payment of a
given amount of milli-satoshi: it returns a unique token which another
lightning daemon can use to pay this invoice.

The 'msatoshi' can be the string "any", which creates an invoice
that can be paid with any amount.

The 'label' must be a unique string; it is never revealed to other nodes on
the lightning network, but it can be used to query the status of this
invoice.

The 'description' is a short description of purpose of payment,
e.g. '1 cup of coffee'. This value is encoded into the BOLT11 invoice
and is viewable by any node you send this invoice to.  It must be
UTF-8, and cannot use '\u' JSON escape codes.

The 'expiry' is optionally the number of seconds the invoice is valid for.
If no value is provided the default of 3600 (1 Hour) is used.

RETURN VALUE
------------

On success, a hash is returned as 'payment_hash' to be given to the payer,
and the 'expiry_time' as a UNIX timestamp.
It also returns a BOLT11 invoice as 'bolt11' to be given to the
payer.
On failure, an error is returned and no invoice is created.  If the
lightning process fails before responding, the caller should use
lightning-listinvoice(7) to query whether this invoice was created or not.

//FIXME:Enumerate errors

AUTHOR
------
Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au> is mainly responsible.

SEE ALSO
--------
lightning-listinvoice(7), lightning-delinvoice(7),
lightning-getroute(7), lightning-sendpay(7).

RESOURCES
---------
Main web site: https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning
