README

This is a PHP Helper library for Nostr. More info about Nostr: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr.

Installation

To use the package in your PHP project with Composer:

$ composer require swentel/nostr-php

Install dependencies if you would like to test / code some things out for yourself with the code example snippets below.

$ composer install

Create an event

This will create an event object with a short text message (kind 1).

use swentel\nostr\Event\Event;

$note = new Event();
$note->setKind(1);
$note->setContent('Hello world!');
$note->setTags([
  ['e', $relayUrl],
  ['p', $public_key, $relayUrl],
  ['r', $relayUrl],
]);
// or use addTag()
$note->addTag(['p', $public_key, $relayUrl]);

Signing an event

Generates the id and signature for an event. The 'pubkey', 'id' and 'sig' properties are added to the event object.

use swentel\nostr\Event\Event;
use swentel\nostr\Sign\Sign;

$note = new Event();
$note->setContent('Hello world!');
$note->setKind(1);

$signer = new Sign();
$signer->signEvent($note, $private_key);

Generating a message

Generate an event message : ["EVENT", <event JSON as created above with id and sig>]

use swentel\nostr\Sign\Sign;
use swentel\nostr\Message\EventMessage;

$signer = new Sign();
$signer->signEvent($note, $private_key);

$eventMessage = new EventMessage($note);
$message_string = $eventMessage->generate();

Publish an event to a relay

Publish an event with a note that has been prepared for sending to a relay.

use swentel\nostr\Event\Event;
use swentel\nostr\Message\EventMessage;
use swentel\nostr\Relay\Relay;

$note = new Event();
$note->setContent('Hello world');
$note->setKind(1);

$signer = new Sign();
$signer->signEvent($note, $private_key);

$eventMessage = new EventMessage($note);

$relayUrl = 'wss://nostr-websocket.tld';
$relay = new Relay($relayUrl);
$relay->setMessage($eventMessage);
$result = $relay->send();

If you would like to publish the event to multiple relays, you can use the RelaySet class.

$relay1 = new Relay(''wss://nostr-websocket1.tld'');
$relay2 = new Relay(''wss://nostr-websocket2.tld'');
$relay3 = new Relay(''wss://nostr-websocket3.tld'');
$relay4 = new Relay(''wss://nostr-websocket4.tld'');
$relaySet = new RelaySet();
$relaySet->setRelays([$relay1, $relay2, $relay3, $relay4]);
$relaySet->setMessage($eventMessage);
$result = $relay->send();

Read events from a relay

Fetch events from a relay.

$filter1 = new Filter();
$filter1->setKinds([1, 3]); // You can add multiple kind numbers
$filter1->setLimit(25); // Limit to fetch only a maximum of 25 events
$filters = [$filter1]; // You can add multiple filters.

$subscription = new Subscription();
$requestMessage = new RequestMessage($subscription->getid(), $filters);

$relayUrl = 'wss://nostr-websocket.tld';
$relay = new Relay($relayUrl);
$relay->setMessage($requestMessage);

$request = new Request($relay, $requestMessage);
$response = $request->send();

$response is a multidimensional array with elements containing each a response message (JSON string) decoded to an array from the relay and sorted by the relay. Output example:

[
  'wss://nostr-websocket.tld' => [
    0 => [
      "EVENT",
      "A8kWzjCVUHSD1rmuwGqyK2PxsolZMO9YXditbg05fch6p3Q4eT7vRFLEJINBna",
      [
        'id' => '1e8534623845629d40f7761c0577edf10f778c490e7b95a524845d9280c7c25a',
        'kind' => 1,
        'pubkey' => '06639a386c9c1014217622ccbcf40908c4f1a0c33e23f8d6d68f4abf655f8f71',
        'created_at' => 1718723787,
        'content' => 'Losing your social graph can feel the same for some I think 😮 ',
        'tags' => [
          ['e', 'f754a238947b7f32168f872650a8dd0b9376493e58005d7e0b8be52f6f229364', 'wss://nos.lol/', 'root'],
          ['e', 'fe7dd6ba22fa0aa39370aa160226b8bc2413460621c8d67ce862205ad5a02c24', 'wss://nos.lol/', 'reply'],
          ['p', 'fb1366abd5e4c92a8a950791bc72d51bde291a83555cb2c629a92fedd78068ac', '', 'mention']
        ],
        'sig' => '888c9b5d9e0b69eba3510dd2b5d03eddcf0a680ab0e7673820fb36a56448ad80701042a669c7ef9918593c5a41c8b3ccc1d82ade50f32b62dd843144f32df403'
    ],
    1 => [
      "EVENT",
      "A8kWzjCVUHSD1rmuwGqyK2PxsolZMO9YXditbg05fch6p3Q4eT7vRFLEJINBna",
      [
        ...Nostr event
      ]
    ],
    2 => [
      ...
    ],
    3 => [
      ...
    ],
    4 => [
      ...
    ]
  ]
]

Read events from a set of relays

Read events from a set of relays with the RelaySet class. It's basically the same snippet as above with the difference you create a RelaySet class and pass it through the Request object.

$filter1 = new Filter();
$filter1->setKinds([1]);
$filter1->setLimit(5);
$filters = [$filter1];
$subscription = new Subscription();
$requestMessage = new RequestMessage($subscription->getId(), $filters);
$relays = [
    new Relay('wss://nostr-websocket-1.tld'),
    new Relay('wss://nostr-websocket-2.tld'),
    new Relay('wss://nostr-websocket-3.tld'),
];
$relaySet = new RelaySet();
$relaySet->setRelays($relays);

$request = new Request($relaySet, $requestMessage);
$response = $request->send();

Generating a private key and a public key

use swentel\nostr\Key\Key;

$key = new Key();

$private_key = $key->generatePrivateKey();
$public_key  = $key->getPublicKey($private_key);

Converting keys

Convert bech32 encoded keys (npub, nsec) to hex.

use swentel\nostr\Key\Key;

$public_key = 'npub10elfcs4fr0l0r8af98jlmgdh9c8tcxjvz9qkw038js35mp4dma8qzvjptg';
$key = new Key();
$hex = $key->convertToHex($public_key);

Convert hex keys to bech32 (npub, nsec).

use swentel\nostr\Key\Key;

$public_key = '7e7e9c42a91bfef19fa929e5fda1b72e0ebc1a4c1141673e2794234d86addf4e';
$private_key = '67dea2ed018072d675f5415ecfaed7d2597555e202d85b3d65ea4e58d2d92ffa';
$key = new Key();
$bech32_public = $key->convertPublicKeyToBech32($public_key);
$bech32_private = $key->convertPrivateKeyToBech32($private_key);

Run tests

All tests can be found in tests.

$ php vendor/bin/phpunit

Documentation with phpDocumentor

Generate documentation with phpDocumentor.

$ phpdoc 

All documentation is saved in the phpdoc.nostr-php.dev directory where the index.html can be opened in any browser. This directory also serves as the root directory for https://phpdoc.nostr-php.dev.

The documentation of phpDocumentor can be found at https://docs.phpdoc.org/.

nostr-php script (cli client)

The library ships with a simple CLI client (bin/nostr-php) to post a short text note to a Nostr relay.

Usage:
$ bin/nostr-php --content "Hello world!" --key /home/path/to/nostr-private.key --relay wss://nostr.pleb.network

Note: the key arguments expects a file with your private key! Do not paste your private key on command line.

Roadmap / features

• Keypair generation and validation
  • Convert from hex to bech32-encoded keys
• Event signing with Schnorr signatures (secp256k1)
• Event validation (issue #17)
• Support NIP-01 basic protocol flow description
  • Publish events
  • Request events (issue #55 credits to kriptonix)
  • Implement all types of relay responses
    • EVENT - sends events requested by the client
    • OK - indicate an acceptance or denial of an EVENT message
    • EOSE - end of stored events
    • CLOSED - subscription is ended on the server side
    • NOTICE - used to send human-readable messages (like errors) to clients
• Improve handling relay responses
• Support NIP-19 bech32-encoded identifiers
  • Encode identifier
  • Decode identifier
• Support multi-threading (async concurrency) for handling requests simultaneously
• Support NIP-42 authentication of clients to relays
• Support NIP-45 event counts
• Support NIP-50 search capability
• Support realtime (runtime) subscriptions with the bin/nostr-php CLI client to listen to new events from relays
• Support NIP-03 openTimestamps attestations for events
• Support NIP-14 subject tag in text events
• Support NIP-40 expiration timestamp
• Support NIP-47 Nostr Wallet Connect
• Support NIP-49 private key encryption

Community

If you need any help, please join this Telegram group: https://t.me/nostr_php

Funding

In May 2024 OpenSats granted Sebastian Hagens for further development of this library for one year. If you would like to support this project with a donation, you could send some lightning sats to sebastian@lnd.sebastix.com or on-chain to bc1p3p6jq2sxsf650lgllv57st9h97xj37fflg5t8d265saz6yqzcdyqd7pzun.

Maintainers

• @sebastix npub1qe3e5wrvnsgpggtkytxteaqfprz0rgxr8c3l34kk3a9t7e2l3acslezefe
• @swentel (original author, inactive) npub1z8n2zt0vzkefhrhpf60face4wwq2nx87sz7wlgcvuk4adddkkycqknzjk5

Contributors

See https://github.com/nostrver-se/nostr-php/graphs/contributors