bitcore/docs/URI.md

URI

Represents a bitcoin payment uri. Bitcoin URI strings became the most popular way to share payment request, sometimes as a bitcoin link and others using a QR code.

URI Examples:

bitcoin:12A1MyfXbW6RhdRAZEqofac5jCQQjwEPBu
bitcoin:12A1MyfXbW6RhdRAZEqofac5jCQQjwEPBu?amount=1.2
bitcoin:12A1MyfXbW6RhdRAZEqofac5jCQQjwEPBu?amount=1.2&message=Payment&label=Satoshi&extra=other-param

The main use that we expect you'll have for the URI class in bitcore is validating and parsing bitcoin URIs. A URI instance exposes the address as a bitcore Address object and the amount in Satoshis, if present.

The code for validating uris looks like this:

var uriString = 'bitcoin:12A1MyfXbW6RhdRAZEqofac5jCQQjwEPBu?amount=1.2';
var valid = URI.isValid(uriString);
var uri = new URI(uriString);
console.log(uri.address.network, uri.amount); // 'livenet', 120000000

All standard parameters can be found as members of the URI instance. However a bitcoin uri may contain other non-standard parameters, all those can be found under the extra namespace.

See the official BIP21 spec for more information.

Other usecase important usecase for the URI class is creating a bitcoin URI for sharing a payment request. That can be acomplished by using an Object to create an instance of URI.

The code for creating an URI from an Object looks like this:

var uriString = new URI({
  address: '12A1MyfXbW6RhdRAZEqofac5jCQQjwEPBu',
  amount : 10000, // in satoshis
  message: 'My payment request'
});
var uriString = uri.toString();