plugins/README.md

# Plugins for c-lightning

Community curated plugins for c-lightning.

![Integration Tests](https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/workflows/Integration%20Tests/badge.svg)

## Available plugins

| Name                               | Short description                                                                         |
|------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| [autopilot][autopilot]             | An autopilot that suggests channels that should be established                            |
| [backup][backup]                   | A simple and reliable backup plugin                                                       |
| [boltz-channel-creation][boltz]    | A c-lightning plugin for Boltz Channel Creation Swaps                                     |
| [btcli4j][btcli4j]                 | A Bitcoin Backend to enable safely the pruning mode, and support also rest APIs.          |
| [commando][commando]               | Authorize peers to run commands on your node, and running commands on them.   |
| [csvexportpays][csvexportpays]     | A plugin that exports all payments to a CSV file                                          |
| [currencyrate][currencyrate]       | A plugin to convert other currencies to BTC using web requests                            |
| [donations][donations]             | A simple donations page to accept donations from the web                                  |
| [drain][drain]                     | Draining, filling and balancing channels with automatic chunks.                           |
| [event-websocket][event-websocket] | Exposes notifications over a Websocket                                                    |
| [feeadjuster][feeadjuster]         | Dynamic fees to keep your channels more balanced                                          |
| [graphql][graphql]                 | Exposes the c-lightning API over [graphql][graphql-spec]                                  |
| [invoice-queue][invoice-queue]     | Listen to lightning invoices from multiple nodes and send to a redis queue for processing |
| [lightning-qt][lightning-qt]       | A bitcoin-qt-like GUI for lightningd                                                      |
| [monitor][monitor]                 | helps you analyze the health of your peers and channels                                   |
| [persistent-channels][pers-chans]  | Maintains a number of channels to peers                                                   |
| [probe][probe]                     | Regularly probes the network for stability                                                |
| [prometheus][prometheus]           | Lightning node exporter for the prometheus timeseries server                              |
| [pruning][pruning]                 | This plugin manages pruning of bitcoind such that it can always sync                      |
| [rebalance][rebalance]             | Keeps your channels balanced                                                              |
| [reckless][reckless]               | An **experimental** plugin manager (search/install plugins)                               |
| [requestinvoice][request-invoice]  | Http server to request invoices                                                           |
| [sauron][sauron]                   | A Bitcoin backend relying on [Esplora][esplora]'s API                                     |
| [sitzprobe][sitzprobe]             | A Lightning Network payment rehearsal utility                                             |
| [sparko][sparko]                   | RPC over HTTP with fine-grained permissions, SSE and spark-wallet support                 |
| [summary][summary]                 | Print a nice summary of the node status                                                   |
| [trustedcoin][trustedcoin]         | Replace your Bitcoin Core with data from public block explorers                           |
| [webhook][webhook]                 | Dispatches webhooks based from [event notifications][event-notifications]                 |
| [watchtower][teos-client]          | Watchtower client for The Eye of Satoshi                                                  |
| [zmq][zmq]                         | Publishes notifications via [ZeroMQ][zmq-home] to configured endpoints                    |

## Installation

To install and activate a plugin you need to stop your lightningd and restart it
with the `plugin` argument like this:

```
lightningd --plugin=/path/to/plugin/directory/plugin_file_name.py
```

Notes:
 - The `plugin_file_name.py` must have executable permissions:
   `chmod a+x plugin_file_name.py`
 - A plugin can be written in any programming language, as it interacts with
   `lightningd` purely using stdin/stdout pipes.

### Automatic plugin initialization

Alternatively, especially when you use multiple plugins, you can copy or symlink
all plugin directories into your `~/.lightning/plugins` directory. The daemon
will load each executable it finds in sub-directories as a plugin. In this case
you don't need to manage all the `--plugin=...` parameters.

### Dynamic plugin initialization

Most of the plugins can be managed using the RPC interface. Use
```
lightning-cli plugin start /path/to/plugin/directory/plugin_file_name
```
to start it, and
```
lightning-cli plugin stop /path/to/plugin/directory/plugin_file_name
```
to stop it.

As a plugin developer this option is configurable with all the available plugin libraries,
and defaults to `true`.


### PYTHONPATH and `pyln`

To simplify plugin development you can rely on `pyln-client` for the plugin
implementation, `pyln-proto` if you need to parse or write lightning protocol
messages, and `pyln-testing` in order to write tests. These libraries can be
retrieved in a number of different ways:

 - Using `pip` tools: `pip3 install pyln-client pyln-testing`
 - Using the `PYTHONPATH` environment variable to include your clightning's
   shipped `pyln-*` libraries:

```bash
export PYTHONPATH=/path/to/lightnind/contrib/pyln-client:/path/to/lightnind/contrib/pyln-testing:$PYTHONPATH
```

### Writing tests

The `pyln-testing` library provides a number of helpers and fixtures to write
tests. While not strictly necessary, writing a test will ensure that your
plugin is working correctly against a number of configurations (both with and
without `DEVELOPER`, `COMPAT` and `EXPERIMENTAL_FEATURES`), and more
importantly that they will continue to work with newly release versions of
c-lightning.

Writing a test is as simple as this:

- The framework will look for unittest filenames starting with `test_`.
- The test functions should also start with `test_`.

```python
from pyln.testing.fixtures import *

pluginopt = {'plugin': os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "YOUR_PLUGIN.py")}

def test_your_plugin(node_factory, bitcoind):
    l1 = node_factory.get_node(options=pluginopt)
    s = l1.rpc.getinfo()
    assert(s['network'] == 'regtest') # or whatever you want to test
```

Tests are run against pull requests, all commits on `master`, as well as once
ever 24 hours to test against the latest `master` branch of the c-lightning
development tree.

Running tests locally can be done like this:
(make sure the `PYTHONPATH` env variable is correct)

```bash
pytest YOUR_PLUGIN/YOUR_TEST.py
```

### Python plugins specifics

#### Additional dependencies

Additionally, some Python plugins come with a `requirements.txt` which can be
used to install the plugin's dependencies using the `pip` tools:

```bash
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
```

Note: You might need to also specify the `--user` command line flag depending on
your environment.

#### Minimum supported Python version

The minimum supported version of Python for this repository is currently `3.6.x` (23 Dec 2016).
Python plugins users must ensure to have a version `>= 3.6`.
Python plugins developers must ensure their plugin to work with all Python versions `>= 3.6`.


## More Plugins from the Community

 - [@conscott's plugins](https://github.com/conscott/c-lightning-plugins)
 - [@renepickhardt's plugins](https://github.com/renepickhardt/c-lightning-plugin-collection)
 - [@rsbondi's plugins](https://github.com/rsbondi/clightning-go-plugin)
 - [c-lightning plugins emulating commands of LND (lncli)](https://github.com/kristapsk/c-lightning-lnd-plugins)

## Plugin Builder Resources

 - [Description of the plugin API][plugin-docs]
 - [C Plugin API][c-api] by @rustyrussell
 - [Python Plugin API & RPC Client][python-api] ([PyPI][python-api-pypi]) by @cdecker and [a video tutorial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYs1I-pCJIg) by @renepickhardt
 - [Go Plugin API & RPC Client][go-api] by @niftynei
 - [C++ Plugin API & RPC Client][cpp-api] by @darosior
 - [Javascript Plugin API & RPC Client][js-api] by @darosior
 - [Java Plugin API & RPC Client][java-api] by @vincenzopalazzo

[esplora]: https://github.com/Blockstream/esplora
[pers-chans]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/persistent-channels
[probe]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/probe
[prometheus]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/prometheus
[summary]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/summary
[donations]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/donations
[drain]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/drain
[plugin-docs]: https://lightning.readthedocs.io/PLUGINS.html
[c-api]: https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/blob/master/plugins/libplugin.h
[currencyrate]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/currencyrate
[python-api]: https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning/tree/master/contrib/pylightning
[python-api-pypi]: https://pypi.org/project/pylightning/
[go-api]: https://github.com/niftynei/glightning
[sitzprobe]: https://github.com/niftynei/sitzprobe
[autopilot]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/autopilot
[rebalance]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/rebalance
[graphql]: https://github.com/nettijoe96/c-lightning-graphql
[graphql-spec]: https://graphql.org/
[lightning-qt]: https://github.com/darosior/pylightning-qt
[cpp-api]: https://github.com/darosior/lightningcpp
[js-api]: https://github.com/lightningd/clightningjs
[monitor]: https://github.com/renepickhardt/plugins/tree/master/monitor
[reckless]: https://github.com/darosior/reckless
[request-invoice]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/request-invoice
[sauron]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/sauron
[zmq-home]: https://zeromq.org/
[zmq]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/zmq
[csvexportpays]: https://github.com/0xB10C/c-lightning-plugin-csvexportpays
[pruning]: https://github.com/Start9Labs/c-lightning-pruning-plugin
[sparko]: https://github.com/fiatjaf/sparko
[webhook]: https://github.com/fiatjaf/webhook
[trustedcoin]: https://github.com/fiatjaf/trustedcoin
[event-notifications]: https://lightning.readthedocs.io/PLUGINS.html#event-notifications
[event-websocket]: https://github.com/rbndg/c-lightning-events
[invoice-queue]: https://github.com/rbndg/Lightning-Invoice-Queue
[boltz]: https://github.com/BoltzExchange/channel-creation-plugin
[feeadjuster]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/feeadjuster
[teos-client]: https://github.com/talaia-labs/python-teos/tree/master/watchtower-plugin
[java-api]: https://github.com/clightning4j/JRPClightning
[btcli4j]: https://github.com/clightning4j/btcli4j 
[backup]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/backup
[commando]: https://github.com/lightningd/plugins/tree/master/commando