nostcat

Websocket client command line tool for nostr relay scripting, with docker and tor support

Examples

Using interactive input

$ nostcat wss://relay.damus.io <return>
["REQ", "RAND", {"kinds": [1], "limit": 8}] <return>
<ctrl-D>

Using stdin (supports multiple lines of commands)

$ echo '["REQ", "RAND", {"kinds": [1], "limit": 8}]' |
  nostcat wss://relay.damus.io

$ cat commands.txt
["REQ", "RAND", {"kinds": [1], "limit": 2}]
["REQ", "RAND2", {"kinds": [2], "limit": 2}]

$ cat commands.txt | nostcat wss://relay.damus.io

Using jq to query Nostr JSON events and select the event JSON

$ echo '["REQ", "RAND", {"kinds": [1], "limit": 8}]' |
  nostcat wss://relay.damus.io |
  jq '.[2]'

$ echo '["REQ", "RAND", {"kinds": [1], "limit": 8}]' |
  nostcat wss://relay.damus.io |
  jq '.[2].content'

Unique (dedupe) results as they come in (note: no longer applies sorting events - FIFO)

$ echo '["REQ", "RAND", {"kinds": [1], "limit": 8}]' |
  nostcat --unique wss://relay.damus.io wss://nostr.ono.re

With a websocket connection timeout in milliseconds

$ echo '["REQ", "RAND", {"kinds": [1], "limit": 2}]' |
  nostcat --connect-timeout 250 wss://relay.damus.io

Stream websocket data (like tail -f)

$ echo '["REQ", "RAND", {"kinds": [1], "limit": 8}]' |
  nostcat --stream wss://relay.damus.io

Output info log messages which can assist with debugging

$ echo '["REQ", "RAND", {"kinds": [1], "limit": 8}]' |
  RUST_LOG=info nostcat wss://relay.damus.io

Pipe events from one server to another (currently limited to 1 event at a time)

$ echo '["REQ", "RAND", {"limit": 1}]' |
  nostcat wss://relay.damus.io |
  jq -c 'del(.[1])' |
  nostcat wss://nostr.ono.re

Pipe events from one server to another (for multiple events, ctrl-C when finished)

$ echo '["REQ", "RAND", {"limit": 3}]' |
  nostcat wss://relay.damus.io |
  jq -c 'del(.[1])' |
  nostcat --stream wss://nostr.ono.re
  <ctrl-C>

Getting started

Using Cargo to install (requires ~/.cargo/bin to be in PATH)

$ cargo install nostcat

Building from source (may be unstable)

$ git clone https://github.com/blakejakopovic/nostcat
$ cargo build --release

Running inside a Docker image

$ docker build -t nostcat .

# Run the the docker image as an executable
$ echo '["REQ", "RAND", {"kinds": [1], "limit": 2}]' | docker run --rm -i nostcat wss://relay.damus.io