LIGHTNING-OFFER(7)

NAME

lightning-offer -- Command for accepting payments

SYNOPSIS

(WARNING: experimental-offers only)

offer amount description [issuer] [label] [quantity_max] [absolute_expiry] [recurrence] [recurrence_base] [recurrence_paywindow] [recurrence_limit] [single_use] [recurrence_start_any
_period]

DESCRIPTION

The offer RPC command creates an offer (or returns an existing one), which is a precursor to creating one or more invoices. It automatically enables the processing of an incoming invoice_request, and issuing of invoices.

Note that for making an offer to pay someone else, see lightning-invoicerequest(7).

The amount parameter can be the string "any", which creates an offer that can be paid with any amount (e.g. a donation). Otherwise it can be a positive value in millisatoshi precision; it can be a whole number, or a whole number ending in msat or sat, or a number with three decimal places ending in sat, or a number with 1 to 11 decimal places ending in btc.

amount can also have an ISO 4217 postfix (i.e. USD), in which case currency conversion will need to be done for the invoice itself. A plugin is needed which provides the "currencyconvert" API for this currency, otherwise the offer creation will fail.

The description is a short description of purpose of the offer, e.g. coffee. This value is encoded into the resulting offer and is viewable by anyone you expose this offer to. It must be UTF-8, and cannot use \u JSON escape codes.

The issuer is another (optional) field exposed in the offer, and reflects who is issuing this offer (i.e. you) if appropriate.

The label field is an internal-use name for the offer, which can be any UTF-8 string. This is NOT encoded in the offer not sent to the issuer.

The presence of quantity_max indicates that the invoice can specify more than one of the items up (and including) this maximum: 0 is a special value meaning "no maximuim". The amount for the invoice will need to be multiplied accordingly. This is encoded in the offer.

The absolute_expiry is optionally the time the offer is valid until, in seconds since the first day of 1970 UTC. If not set, the offer remains valid (though it can be deactivated by the issuer of course). This is encoded in the offer.

recurrence means that an invoice is expected at regular intervals. The argument is a positive number followed by one of "seconds", "minutes", "hours", "days", "weeks", "months" or "years" (variants without the trailing "s" are also permitted). This is encoded in the offer. The semantics of recurrence is fairly predictable, but fully documented in BOLT 12. e.g. "4weeks".

recurrence_base is an optional time in seconds since the first day of 1970 UTC. This indicates when the first period begins; without this, the recurrence periods start from the first invoice.

recurrence_paywindow is an optional argument of form '-time+time[%]'. The first time is the number of seconds before the start of a period in which an invoice and payment is valid, the second time is the number of seconds after the start of the period. For example -604800+86400 means you can fetch an pay the invoice 4 weeks before the given period starts, and up to 1 day afterwards. The optional % indicates that the amount of the invoice will be scaled by the time remaining in the period. If this is not specified, the default is that payment is allowed during the current and previous periods. This is encoded in the offer.

recurrence_limit is an optional argument to indicate the maximum period which exists. eg. "12" means there are 13 periods, from 0 to 12 inclusive. This is encoded in the offer.

single_use (default false) indicates that the offer is only valid once; we may issue multiple invoices, but as soon as one is paid all other invoices will be expired (i.e. only one person can pay this offer).

recurrence_start_any_period (default true) means that the invoice must start by paying during any period; otherwise it must start by paying at the first period. Setting this to false only makes sense if recurrence_base was provided. This is encoded in the offer.

RETURN VALUE

On success, an object is returned, containing:

•   offer_id (hash): the id of this offer (merkle hash of non-signature fields)

•   active (boolean): whether this can still be used (always true)

•   single_use (boolean): whether this expires as soon as it's paid (reflects the single_use parameter)

•   bolt12 (string): the bolt12 encoding of the offer

•   used (boolean): True if an associated invoice has been paid

•   created (boolean): false if the offer already existed

•   label (string, optional): the (optional) user-specified label

On failure, an error is returned and no offer is created. If the lightning process fails before responding, the caller should use lightning-listoffers(7) to query whether this offer was created or not.

If the offer already existed, and is still active, that is returned; if it's not active then this call fails.

The following error codes may occur:

•   -1: Catchall nonspecific error.

•   1000: Offer with this offer_id already exists (but is not active).

AUTHOR

Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au> is mainly responsible.

SEE ALSO

lightning-listoffers(7), lightning-disableoffer(7), lightning-invoicerequest(7).

RESOURCES

Main web site: https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning