Bitcore-p2p: Peer.connect does not work

Question

I'm trying to run a simple script to connect to a Bitcoin peer, like this one:

var bitcore = require('bitcore-lib')
var p2p = require('bitcore-p2p')
var Peer = p2p.Peer;

var peer = new Peer({host: 'localhost', port: 18333, network: Networks.testnet})
peer.on('connect', function () { console.log('connect'); })
peer.on('ready', function(){  console.log('ready'); });
peer.on('disconnect', function() {  console.log('connection closed'); });
peer.connect()

However, the connection seems to never be established. I only get the 'connect' and the 'connection closed' output, but not 'connected'. The port I set is the one in the Bitcore config file.

Can someone please help me figure out what is the problem?

Answer 1

I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to do with:

peer.on('connected', function(){ console.log('connected'); });

You can just do on ready instead.

peer.on('ready', function(){ console.log('connected'); });

Example connecting to a peer and receiving notifications

var bitcore = require('bitcore-lib');
var Peer = require('bitcore-p2p').Peer;

var peer = new Peer({host: "101.201.31.79"});
//IP of one of the btc.com's miners

peer.on('ready', function(){
    console.log("Connected "+peer.version, peer.subversion, peer.bestHeight);
});
peer.on('disconnect', function(){
    console.log("disconnected");
});
//loop through peer notifications
peer.on('inv', function(message){
    var nodeMsg = message.inventory;
    var nodeMsgLen = nodeMsg.length;
    for (var i = 0; i < nodeMsgLen; i++){
        console.log(nodeMsg[i].hash);
    };
});
//connect
peer.connect();

Answer 2

I'm actually not sure how, but now everything works.

I'm writing here a few things to be kept in mind to make it work:

1) the port number is that of the bitcoind server (8333 for mainnet, 18333 for testnet)

2) in case of testnet, the network must be passed as an option to the Peer constructor

3) node version must be 4.x (use nvm use 4), otherwise the code will raise an exception