⚡️ Lightning Tip Cards

by #sathoshiengineeringcrew

A tip card system based on LNbits and the lightning network

Lightning Tip Cards are a tip (or gift) card system, where you can fund tip cards via the lightning network and the gifted person can redeem the funded cards. The gifted person gets a short introduction to bitcoin and a lightning app recommendation to start their journey into the bitcoin rabbit hole.

It is an open-source project developed and operated for the benefit of the Bitcoin community, with a focus on "How to gentle orange pill nocoiners" - and without warranty of any kind.

LNbits is used for the wallet and lightning payments in the background.

Explanation Videos

• Youtube: How to use lightning tip cards - DE
• Youtube: How to use lightning tip cards - EN
• Youtube: How to create your set of lightning tip cards - DE
• Youtube: How to create your set of lightning tip cards - EN

#satohsiengineeringcrew is #happy2help

Setup for development

Prerequisites

• nodejs 16.18.0 LTS
• npm
• docker (recommended for redis setup, see below)

Setup

npm install
cd frontend && npm install && cd ..
cd backend && npm install && cd ..

If you are working at Satoshi Engineering, please configure your GIT repo to use the GIT hooks from the directory .githooks:

git config core.hooksPath .githooks

Backend

• Setup a redis database on localhost. You can do that by using docker (https://hub.docker.com/_/redis). Just make sure to expose the port 6379 to the host.
• Setting up redis commander is also recommended: https://hub.docker.com/r/rediscommander/redis-commander
  • See Example
• Create your own wallet on https://legend.lnbits.com/.
• Create a backend/.env file (or copy it from backend/.env.example) and set the following variables:
  • TIPCARDS_ORIGIN probably http://localhost:5173 -> where your frontend will be served
  • TIPCARDS_API_ORIGIN probably http://localhost:4000 -> where your backend will be served
  • LNBITS_INVOICE_READ_KEY paste from your lnbits wallet: get this from https://legend.lnbits.com/wallet and clicking on "API info"
  • LNBITS_ADMIN_KEY paste from your lnbits wallet: get this from https://legend.lnbits.com/wallet and clicking on "API info"
• You can look up additional optional variables in .env.example

Frontend

• Create a frontend/.env.development.local file (or copy it from frontend/.env.development) and add the following variable:
  • VITE_BACKEND_API_ORIGIN probably http://localhost:4000 -> where your frontend will be served

Testing

If you want to test the tipcards on your local machine, here are some hints

• Fund your https://legend.lnbits.com/wallet with 1 - 100sats. The tipcard redeeming creates a lightning invoice via lnbits and there are transaction costs.
• It won't work with your smartphone, because the development setup restricted to localhost. (And if you use vite --host to expose the port, your lightning apps will refuse to work because there is no ssl connection)
  • We use BlueWallet Deskop app for testing (it can access localhost)

VSCode

Ngrok

Ngrok is used to expose you local environment to the web. This is needed to test auth/backend features with your phone (e.g. paying invoices, logging in via lnurl-auth).

1. Copy backend/.env.example into backend/.env
2. Go to https://ngrok.com and create an account
3. Go to https://dashboard.ngrok.com/get-started/setup, copy your authtoken and add it to backend/.env
4. Run npm run proxy in the backend directory. This starts an express server that proxies all requests to your other services that we will start later.
5. Run npm run ngrok in the backend directory. Then copy the ngrok url that will be pasted in the console (something like https://cdb6-62-178-206-224.ngrok.io).
6. Open backend/.env and set the ngrok url (from the previous point) for TIPCARDS_ORIGIN and TIPCARDS_API_ORIGIN as this is now your public URL for your phone and lnbits webhooks.
7. Open frontend/.env.development.local and set VITE_BACKEND_API_ORIGIN= to an empty string. The API origin will be the same as the frontend origin (the ngrok URL).
8. Run npm run dev in frontend/ and backend/ directories.

Extensions

• Vue Language Features (Volar)
• PostCSS Language Support
• Tailwind CSS IntelliSense

Do not use Vetur, deinstall it, it was for Vue 2. Volar is recommended by the Vue 3 Guide.
Do not use the "TypeScript Vue Plugin (Volar)", but use "take over mode" of Volar (see right below).

Use Volar's take over mode (disable builtin Typescript extension)

• Make sure "Vue Language Features (Volar)" is installed and activated (see above)
• In the commands input (Cmd/ctrl + shift + P), type in builtin
• Click on "Extensions: Show built-in Extensions"
• Search for typescript
• Disable "TypeScript and JavaScript Language Support" for Workspace only

Run from source

Start the frontend server on http://localhost:5173

cd frontend && npm run dev

Start the backend server on http://localhost:4000

cd backend && npm run dev

Production

Deployment is done via Gitlab CI/CD, see .gitlab-ci.yml

Tip us

If you like this project, please adapt the landingpage to your local stores, that accept bitcoin or even extend it. Why not send some tip love?