Restful-identity NPM

restful-identity

This package implements a Jolocom Self Sovereign Identity as a Node RPC server (the name stuck).

Installation

NPM

It can be easily installed via npm install -g restful-identity.

Git

It can also be installed via git with git clone https://github.com/jolocom/restful-identity and yarn install and yarn build

Usage

If installed globally via npm, it can be run simply with $ restful-identity. Running from the repo is easy with $ ./main.js or $ node main.js If using a secure hardware element, this program MUST be used with sudo or as root in order to enable hardware interfacing.

Configuration

The server takes two kinds of configuration: cli and ini format. By default it will look for a /etc/jolocom.conf file. This can be changed with the --file=/some/path command line argument. Command line arguments will override configuration file arguments if both are present and conflict.

Identity

These arguments corrospond to the unique Identity of the server. They should be kept secret. They consist of:

seed: a 64 character (32 byte) hexadecimal string
password: any string

Keep in mind that if you are using this server with a compatible secure hardware element, using the identity configuration will override the hardware element, and so should not be used.

The default arguments if none are provided are:

seed: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
password: secret

Backend

These arguments represent the Self-Sovereign Identity backend that the server will interact with. This is a complex topic, but think of it as a database that it must access. The arguments consist of:

endpoint: A URL
contract: An Ethereum-like contract address

The default backend used is the Jolocom SSI system.

Port

This is simply the port that the server will listen on. The default is 3000

File-based Configuration

Here is an example configuration file with every option (they are all optional):

[identity]
seed = B491A4D2A93281420DE9D799943DA73C3BCEE08FAD6EACD8E8A69BBE77C6D110
password = some_secret_password

[backend]
endpoint = https://some.chain.interface/endpoint
contract = 0x50ee3ad2042a16c9a9b75b447947c7a7d2c53e29

[deployment]
port = 3000

Command Line Configuration

Any of the fields in the file configuration can also be used on the command line:

$ restful-identity --port=3000 --endpoint=https://some.chain.interface/endpoint --contract=0x50ee3ad2042a16c9a9b75b447947c7a7d2c53e29

Note that the grouped configs (backend and identity) MUST have BOTH arguments in order to override the file.

API

API Documentation can be found by running the server and visiting the /documentation/ route. Swagger descriptions can also be found at /documentation/json and /documentation/yaml.