Specter API

Specter provides a Rest-API which is, by default, in production deactivated. In order to activate, you need to export a variable like that:

export SPECTER_API_ACTIVE=True

The Authentication is also necessary even if you don't activate any Authentication mechanism. In order to make reasonable assumptions about how stable a specific endpoint is, we're versioning them via the URL. Currently, all endpoints are preset with v1alpha which pretty much don't give you any guarantee.

The Specter API is using JWT tokens for Authentication. In order to use the API, you need to obtain such a token. Currently, obtaining a token is not possible via the UI but only via a special endpoint, which accepts BasicAuth (as the only endpoint).

NB: The default user and password key-value pair for Specter Desktop is admin:admin.

Curl:

Create the token like this:

curl -u user:password --location --request POST 'http://127.0.0.1:25441/api/v1alpha/token' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{
    "jwt_token_description": "A free description here to know for what the token is used",
    "jwt_token_life": "30 days"
}'

As a result, you get a json like this:

{
    "message": "Token generated",
    "jwt_token_id": "4969e9fb-2097-41e7-af53-5e2082a3e4d3",
    "jwt_token": "eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJ1c2VybmFtZSI6ImFkbWluIiwiand0X3Rva2VuX2lkIjoiNDk2OWU5ZmItMjA5Ny00MWU3LWFmNTMtNWUyMDgyYTNlNGQzIiwiand0X3Rva2VuX2Rlc2NyaXB0aW9uIjoiQSBmcmVlIGRlc2NyaXB0aW9uIGhlcmUgdG8ga25vdyBmb3Igd2hhdCB0aGUgdG9rZW4gaXMgdXNlZCIsImV4cCI6MTY5NjU4NDQ0MiwiaWF0IjoxNjY1MDQ4NDQyfQ.S2NIQknkNqoe-u0xA-W8ZxxkDM-I5B8eDCUwLrG-98E",
    "jwt_token_description": "A free description here to know for what the token is used",
    "jwt_token_life": 31536000
}

The token will only be shown once. However, apart from the token itself, you can still get the details of a specific token like this:

curl -s -u user:password --location --request GET 'http://127.0.0.1:25441/api/v1alpha/token/4969e9fb-2097-41e7-af53-5e2082a3e4d3' | jq .

{
  "message": "Token exists",
  "jwt_token_description": "A free description here to know for what the token is used",
  "jwt_token_life": 2592000,
  "jwt_token_life_remaining": 2591960.19173622,
  "expiry_status": "Valid"
}

The jwt_token_life value and the other one are expressed in seconds.

In order to use that token, you can e.g. call the specter-endpoint like this:

curl -s --location --request GET 'http://127.0.0.1:25441/api/v1alpha/specter' \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJ1c2VybmFtZSI6ImFkbWluIiwiand0X3Rva2VuX2lkIjoiNDk2OWU5ZmItMjA5Ny00MWU3LWFmNTMtNWUyMDgyYTNlNGQzIiwiand0X3Rva2VuX2Rlc2NyaXB0aW9uIjoiQSBmcmVlIGRlc2NyaXB0aW9uIGhlcmUgdG8ga25vdyBmb3Igd2hhdCB0aGUgdG9rZW4gaXMgdXNlZCIsImV4cCI6MTY5NjU4NDQ0MiwiaWF0IjoxNjY1MDQ4NDQyfQ.S2NIQknkNqoe-u0xA-W8ZxxkDM-I5B8eDCUwLrG-98E' | jq .

The result would be something like this:

{
  "data_folder": "/home/someuser/.specter",
  "config": {
    "auth": {
      "method": "usernamepassword",
      "password_min_chars": 6,
      "rate_limit": "10",
      "registration_link_timeout": "1"
    },
    [...]
  "wallets_names": [],
  "last_update": "10/06/2022, 11:35:21",
  "alias_name": {},
  "name_alias": {},
  "wallets_alias": []
}

Python

Here is an example of using the API with python. We don't assume that you use BasicAuth via python. Instead of an example of a real token, we use <token> and <token_id>.

import requests
response = requests.get('http://127.0.0.1:25441/api/v1alpha/token/<token_id>', auth=('user', 'password'))
json.loads(response.text)

### Pass the token to get authorized
import requests
response = requests.get('http://127.0.0.1:25441/api/v1alpha/specter', headers={'Authorization': 'Bearer <token>'})
json.loads(response.text)

Endpoints