In this section we will learn how to set up and interact with lnd using a web client built by Francois Mably. Setup instructions are courtesy of the creator himself. Before beginning this step make sure you have node and npm installed.

Setting up the LND web client

# Clone the repo and move into it:
git clone https://github.com/mably/lncli-web $GOPATH/src/github.com/mably/lncli-web
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/mably/lncli-web

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Setup default configuration files
"./node_modules/.bin/gulp" bundle

# Setup cert file
# Enter the Lnd home directory, located by default at ~/.lnd on Linux or
# /Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Lnd/ on Mac OSX
# $APPDATA/Local/Lnd on Windows. Also change '/CN=localhost/O=lnd' to '//CN=localhost\O=lnd' if you are using Git Bash.
cd ~/.lnd
openssl ecparam -genkey -name prime256v1 -out tls.key
openssl req -new -sha256 -key tls.key -out csr.csr -subj '/CN=localhost/O=lnd'
openssl req -x509 -sha256 -days 36500 -key tls.key -in csr.csr -out tls.cert
rm csr.csr
cp tls.cert $GOPATH/src/github.com/mably/lncli-web/lnd.cert

# Start the server to point to our Alice node:
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/mably/lncli-web
node server --lndhost=localhost:10001

# Check out the available command line arguments
node server --help

Open up http://localhost:8280/ in your browser to see the web dashboard.

Poking around

Now would be a good time to reopen that channel we had between Alice and Bob. Except this time, we’re going to do it through the web dashboard. Feel free to try this on your own - the web dashboard is intuitive enough that we don’t need step by step instructions for it.

Note: The Lightning desktop app is also available and is another good way to start experimenting with Lightning. You can find it here.

Moving on to Step 3

By now, you should have gained familiarity with the web client. In Stage 3, we will learn how to set up a gRPC client for programmatic access to our lnd nodes.

Questions