Stellar JS SDK (js-stellar-sdk)

js-stellar-sdk is a JavaScript library for communicating with a Stellar Horizon server and Stellar RPC. While primarily intended for applications built on Node.js or in the browser, it can be adapted for use in other environments with some tinkering.

The library provides:

a networking layer API for Horizon endpoints (REST-based),
a networking layer for Soroban RPC (JSONRPC-based).
facilities for building and signing transactions, for communicating with a Stellar Horizon instance, and for submitting transactions or querying network history.

Jump to:

Installation: details on hitting the ground running
Usage: links to documentation and a variety of workarounds for non-traditional JavaScript environments
CLI: generate TypeScript bindings for Stellar smart contracts
Developing: contribute to the project!
Understanding stellar-sdk vs. stellar-base
License

Installation

Using npm, pnpm, or yarn to include stellar-sdk in your own project:

npm install --save @stellar/stellar-sdk
# or
pnpm add @stellar/stellar-sdk
# or
yarn add @stellar/stellar-sdk

Then, require or import it in your JavaScript code:

var StellarSdk = require('@stellar/stellar-sdk');
// or
import * as StellarSdk from '@stellar/stellar-sdk';

(Preferably, you would only import the pieces you need to enable tree-shaking and lower your final bundle sizes.)

Browsers

You can use a CDN:

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/stellar-sdk/{version}/stellar-sdk.js"></script>

Note that this method relies on using a third party to host the JS library. This may not be entirely secure. You can self-host it via Bower:

bower install @stellar/stellar-sdk

and include it in the browser:

<script src="./bower_components/stellar-sdk/stellar-sdk.js"></script>
<script>
  console.log(StellarSdk);
</script>

If you don’t want to use or install Bower, you can copy the packaged JS files from the Bower repo, or just build the package yourself locally (see Developing :arrow_right: Building) and copy the bundle.

Always make sure that you are using the latest version number. They can be found on the releases page in GitHub.

Custom Installation

The default bundle uses a native-fetch HTTP client with no axios dependency. If you need the axios transport (for example, to match the behavior of older SDK versions), set the USE_AXIOS environment variable to true when building.

Build with Axios

npm run build:browser:axios

This will create stellar-sdk-axios.js in dist/. Consumers can also import the axios-backed entry from Node via @stellar/stellar-sdk/axios.

Usage

The usage documentation for this library lives in a handful of places:

across the Stellar Developer Docs, which includes tutorials and examples,
within this repository itself, and
on the generated API doc site — which also publishes agent-friendly bundles, raw markdown siblings, and a crawler policy for AI tools. The site’s URL, base path, and AI policy values live in config/site.ts.

You can also refer to:

the documentation for the Horizon REST API (if using the Horizon module) and
the documentation for Soroban RPC’s API (if using the rpc module)

Usage with React-Native

Install yarn add --dev rn-nodeify
Add the following postinstall script:

yarn rn-nodeify --install url,events,https,http,util,stream,crypto,vm,buffer --hack --yarn

Uncomment require('crypto') on shim.js
react-native link react-native-randombytes
Create file rn-cli.config.js

module.exports = {
  resolver: {
    extraNodeModules: require("node-libs-react-native"),
  },
};

Add import "./shim"; to the top of index.js
yarn add @stellar/stellar-sdk

There is also a sample that you can follow.

Note: Only the V8 compiler (on Android) and JSC (on iOS) have proper support for Buffer and Uint8Array as is needed by this library. Otherwise, you may see bizarre errors when doing XDR encoding/decoding such as source not specified.

Usage with Expo managed workflows

Install yarn add --dev rn-nodeify
Add the following postinstall script:

yarn rn-nodeify --install process,url,events,https,http,util,stream,crypto,vm,buffer --hack --yarn

Add import "./shim"; to your app’s entry point (by default ./App.js)
yarn add @stellar/stellar-sdk
expo install expo-random

At this point, the Stellar SDK will work, except that StellarSdk.Keypair.random() will throw an error. To work around this, you can create your own method to generate a random keypair like this:

import * as Random from 'expo-random';
import { Keypair } from '@stellar/stellar-sdk';

const generateRandomKeypair = () => {
  const randomBytes = Random.getRandomBytes(32);
  return Keypair.fromRawEd25519Seed(Buffer.from(randomBytes));
};

Usage with CloudFlare Workers

Both eventsource (needed for streaming) and axios (needed for making HTTP requests) are problematic dependencies in the CFW environment. The experimental branch make-eventsource-optional is an attempt to resolve these issues.

It requires the following additional tweaks to your project:

the axios-fetch-adapter lets you use axios with fetch as a backend, which is available to CF workers
it only works with axios@"<= 1.0.0" versions, so we need to force an override into the underlying dependency
and this can be problematic with newer yarn versions, so we need to force the environment to use Yarn 1

In summary, the package.json tweaks look something like this:

"dependencies": {
  // ...
  "@stellar/stellar-sdk": "git+https://github.com/stellar/js-stellar-sdk#make-eventsource-optional",
  "@vespaiach/axios-fetch-adapter": "^0.3.1",
  "axios": "^0.26.1"
},
"overrides": {
  "@stellar/stellar-sdk": {
    "axios": "$axios"
  }
},
"packageManager": "yarn@1.22.19"

Then, you need to override the adapter in your codebase:

import { Horizon } from '@stellar/stellar-sdk';
import fetchAdapter from '@vespaiach/axios-fetch-adapter';

Horizon.AxiosClient.defaults.adapter = fetchAdapter as any;

// then, the rest of your code...

All HTTP calls will use fetch, now, meaning it should work in the CloudFlare Worker environment.

CLI

The SDK includes a command-line tool for generating TypeScript bindings from Stellar smart contracts. These bindings provide fully-typed client code with IDE autocompletion and compile-time type checking.

Running the CLI

# Using npx (no installation required)
npx @stellar/stellar-sdk generate [options]

# Or if installed globally
stellar-js generate [options]

Generating Bindings

You can generate bindings from three different sources:

From a local WASM file

npx @stellar/stellar-sdk generate \
  --wasm ./path/to/wasm_file/my_contract.wasm \
  --output-dir ./my-contract-client \
  --contract-name my-contract

From a WASM hash on the network

# testnet, futurenet, and localnet have default RPC URLs
npx @stellar/stellar-sdk generate \
  --wasm-hash <hex-encoded-hash> \
  --network testnet \
  --output-dir ./my-contract-client \
  --contract-name my-contract

From a deployed contract ID

npx @stellar/stellar-sdk generate \
  --contract-id CABC...XYZ \
  --network testnet \
  --output-dir ./my-contract-client

With custom RPC server options

For mainnet or when connecting to RPC servers that require authentication:

# Mainnet requires --rpc-url (no default)
npx @stellar/stellar-sdk generate \
  --contract-id CABC...XYZ \
  --rpc-url https://my-rpc-provider.com \
  --network mainnet \
  --output-dir ./my-contract-client

# With custom timeout and headers for authenticated RPC servers
npx @stellar/stellar-sdk generate \
  --contract-id CABC...XYZ \
  --rpc-url https://my-rpc-server.com \
  --network mainnet \
  --output-dir ./my-contract-client \
  --timeout 30000 \
  --headers '{"Authorization": "Bearer my-token"}'

# localnet with default RPC URL auto-enables --allow-http
npx @stellar/stellar-sdk generate \
  --contract-id CABC...XYZ \
  --network localnet \
  --output-dir ./my-contract-client

# When overriding the default URL, you must specify --allow-http if using HTTP
npx @stellar/stellar-sdk generate \
  --contract-id CABC...XYZ \
  --rpc-url http://my-local-server:8000/rpc \
  --network localnet \
  --output-dir ./my-contract-client \
  --allow-http

CLI Options

Option	Description
`--wasm <path>`	Path to a local WASM file
`--wasm-hash <hash>`	Hex-encoded hash of WASM blob on the network
`--contract-id <id>`	Contract ID of a deployed contract
`--rpc-url <url>`	Stellar RPC server URL (has defaults for testnet/futurenet/localnet, required for mainnet)
`--network <network>`	Network to use: `testnet`, `mainnet`, `futurenet`, or `localnet` (required for network sources)
`--output-dir <dir>`	Output directory for generated bindings (required)
`--contract-name <name>`	Name for the generated package (derived from filename if not provided)
`--overwrite`	Overwrite existing files in the output directory
`--allow-http`	Allow insecure HTTP connections to RPC server (default: false)
`--timeout <ms>`	RPC request timeout in milliseconds
`--headers <json>`	Custom headers as JSON object (e.g., `'{"Authorization": "Bearer token"}'`)

Default RPC URLs

When using --network, the CLI provides default RPC URLs for most networks:

Network	Default RPC URL
`testnet`	`https://soroban-testnet.stellar.org`
`futurenet`	`https://rpc-futurenet.stellar.org`
`localnet`	`http://localhost:8000/rpc` (auto-enables `--allow-http` only when using default URL)
`mainnet`	None - you must provide `--rpc-url` (find providers)

Generated Output

The CLI generates a complete npm package structure:

my-contract-client/
├── src/
│   ├── index.ts      # Barrel exports
│   ├── client.ts     # Typed Client class with contract methods
│   └── types.ts      # TypeScript interfaces for contract types
├── package.json
├── tsconfig.json
├── README.md
└── .gitignore

Using Generated Bindings

After generating, you can use the bindings in your project:

import { Client } from './my-contract-client';

const client = new Client({
  contractId: 'CABC...XYZ',
  networkPassphrase: Networks.TESTNET,
  rpcUrl: 'https://soroban-testnet.stellar.org',
  publicKey: keypair.publicKey(),
  ...basicNodeSigner(keypair, Networks.TESTNET),
});

// Fully typed method calls with IDE autocompletion
const result = await client.transfer({
  from: 'GABC...',
  to: 'GDEF...',
  amount: 1000n,
});

Developing

So you want to contribute to the library: welcome! Whether you’re working on a fork or want to make an upstream request, the dev-test loop is pretty straightforward.

Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/stellar/js-stellar-sdk.git

Install Node

Because we support the oldest maintenance version of Node, please install and develop on the version pinned in .nvmrc (currently Node 22) so you don’t get surprised when your code works locally but breaks in CI.

Here’s how to install nvm if you haven’t: https://github.com/creationix/nvm

nvm install

If you work on several projects that use different Node versions, you might it helpful to install this automatic version manager: https://github.com/wbyoung/avn

Enable Corepack

corepack enable

Install dependencies inside js-stellar-sdk folder:

cd js-stellar-sdk
pnpm install

Observe the project’s code style

While you’re making changes, make sure to run the linter to catch any linting errors (in addition to making sure your text editor supports ESLint) and conform to the project’s code style.

pnpm run fmt

Building

You can build the developer version (unoptimized, commented, with source maps, etc.) or the production bundles:

pnpm run build
# or
pnpm run build:prod

Testing

To run all tests:

pnpm run test

To run a specific set of tests:

pnpm run test:node
pnpm run test:browser
pnpm run test:integration

In order to have a faster test loop, these suite-specific commands do not build the bundles first (unlike pnpm run test). If you make code changes, you will need to run pnpm run build before running the tests again to see your changes.

To generate and check the documentation site:

# install the `serve` command if you don't have it already
npm i -g serve

# clone the base library for complete docs
git clone https://github.com/stellar/js-stellar-base

# generate the docs files
pnpm run docs

# get these files working in a browser
cd jsdoc && serve .

# you'll be able to browse the docs at http://localhost:5000

Publishing

For information on how to contribute or publish new versions of this software to npm, please refer to our contribution guide.

Miscellaneous

`stellar-sdk` vs `stellar-base`

stellar-sdk is a high-level library that serves as client-side API for Horizon and Soroban RPC, while `stellar-base is lower-level library for creating Stellar primitive constructs via XDR helpers and wrappers.

Most people will want stellar-sdk instead of stellar-base. You should only use stellar-base if you know what you’re doing!

If you add stellar-sdk to a project, do not add stellar-base! Mismatching versions could cause weird, hard-to-find bugs. stellar-sdk automatically installs stellar-base and exposes all of its exports in case you need them.

License

js-stellar-sdk is licensed under an Apache-2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.